Summer has barely begun
to settle, when they emerge
from spring’s sowing silt and spread
faster, wider than the pandemic
we’ve just barely survived.
Survival is a funny thing:
humans live longer than ever
before, centenarians scattered
about, while the invading winged
insects cycle steadily through.
Holding steady is an uncommon
art: the insects’ flight patterns
like drunken helicopters cascading
from the sky. Maybe it is because they are
dying as they emerge from the earth…
Death draws ever nearer, my brother
wrote me when I turned 35. How
do we know when middle age has
arrived when there’s no telling where
the terminal of our terrestrial trajectories
awaits? What makes the terrain ripe
for cicadas here and not a few miles
down the road? Why the hundreds
of finger-sized holes by the tree
on this street corner and not that?
The red-eyed bugs have cornered me,
it seems, even more so than the virus
that has invisibly flown around us
for over a year now: they’ve snatched
the sun’s silence and the clarity of air…
Being home-bound was clarifying,
the way it distilled the constant buzz
of busy bodies to an arrested expanse
of uncluttered time: we, too, are drunken
helicopters, spiraling in search of light.
–
Genevieve Creedon is a scholar, poet, and essayist whose writing focuses on the wonders and mysteries of earthly life. She has lived in Connecticut, New York, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, and most recently, Indiana, and she strives to explore the worlds around her with her human and canine companions.