Brooding
I hate to admit it: how I hate
and love each prehistoric and alien bug
who screams and screams into the sun
boldly–their dumb and confident thwacks
against my windows, the sides of cars
sitting in the lot in their frenzy.
I want to hold them in my hand now,
not run from them like the last time
or the time before that. I was just a kid
then. Let them cover my body
like a fevered blanket, writhing thing:
tied together by the oak tree and urge
to burrow and all else
that makes us kin.
40 thoughts on "Brooding"
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I like the love-hate relationship here or at least that’s how I’m reading it. So great to see you again this year!
It almost sounds like you have become one with them, a truce? I had to read it through a couple times, but that’s what a good poem does, draws you, makes you wrestle with it.
Thanks, Lee! I think there’s a truce, but also still wrestling with them in the most ineffectual of ways. They have the advantage!
It’s great to see you, too! Thank for your comments. I think I will always have a love-hate relationship with the cicadas. They’re interesting but pesky little calendars!
Hi Shaun 🙂 you win ! First Cicadas poem…..I’m working on one too if they would just be quiet for a minute. Lol….happy june.
I loved it! I think we might need a cicada section in this year’s anthology by the end of the month!
love “thwacks,” the ending sounds Yeatsian and is an unforgettable image. I’m partial to crickets.
Me, too, about crickets, grasshoppers, and onomatopoeia!
That ending is killer!
Thank you, Kevin!
Prehistoric, alien—good description.
Thank you, Gwyneth!
This is so relevant right now! Every time I’m in the car I hear screaming.
They are a little nuts outside here but I also think I’ll feel their absense now!
Gosh that “fevered blanket” is wonderful — it’s both somehow comforting and creepy! Also really like how you sneak the passage of time in there, the two previous broods.
Thanks, Bill! I have some pretty vivid memories of the 1991 brood!
Visceral and physical description.
Escalating to perfection at the end
Thanks, Joseph!
Alien that screams into the sun? Feels like you’re almost describing me!
Honestly? Me too most days lately!
I am not a cicada fan but I do appreciate that they are so sure of something (especially the screaming into the sun)
Me, too, Arwen. Their energy feels so ancient and urgent in a compelling way.
fevered blanket, the disgust and intimacy – damn dude, excellent
Thanks, Manny! I feel like I have been too intimate with the cicadas (or rather, they have been too intimate with me lately)
Agree with others about great lines and perfect timing as we hear the cicadas scream.
Thanks so much, Linda!
If you can’t beat them, join them? Nicely done, Shaun! The Brooding Bodhisattva,
Thank you! At this point, they could bury me with them in a couple weeks.
Some things I like about this poem is the ambiguity of the title, the opening hook, your effective use of enjambment (lines 4-5 specifically), and just the overall theme of kinship to the natural world. Thanks for sharing Shaun!
Thanks for your kind words and reading!
“Like a fevered blanket, writhing thing”
Always a privilege to read your work.
Thanks so much, and likewise, Patti!
Love this landing!:
Let them cover my body
like a fevered blanket, writhing thing:
tied together by the oak tree and urge
to burrow and all else
that makes us kin.
Thanks, Pam!
Those ending lines! So good to read your poems again.
Thank you, Karen! I look forward to your poems!
Gorgeous ending lines. I agree with Karen–it’s good to read your poems again!
Thank you, Sue! It’s good to read your voice again too!
like Nausicaa Valley of the Wind, nature can be a guide and friend
Yes! In fact, they do kinda resemble Nausicaa quite a bit!