Thom Goodin
My parents walked
with cicadas,
all their August
days with cicadas, left
behind the dinner
dishes, clamorous
children, walked in
and out of dying
elms, hand in hand
with always plural
cicadas, always more
sound than thing, the din
and thrum of them,
the chant, the bleating
insistence, anonymous,
dark-robed choristers,
the reassuring pulse
of a presence that
will be with us every
summer dusk and in
the dusk of dusks.