I do not want to get involved today
in the world or in this poem; I sit
outside listening to the cicadas
tell me it’s not supposed to be
this hot in August. Why not? I ask
because, if anyone, cicadas believe
in telling the truth. You didn’t
hear us, they say in vibrations
marching onward through morning
blue when the moon rises a half flat
white cotton puff with edges
bleeding into the faint gray outline
of its other half. The tree frog chirps,
interpreting over and over again:
It is hot. It is hot. Listen, tomorrow is
September. That’s it, she says and
then goes silent. I sit under the Sweet
Autumn vine as it drips down green
teardrop leaves, white misty flowers,
the occasional dried brown leaf en-
tangled in its grabby tendrils. The bumble
bee hums along each bloom’s lengthened
growing season, its hibernation time
shrinking. The oak stands sentry, warty
roots snaking into a past civilization buried
beneath this one; above, its leaves smell
the next epoch beyond the Anthropocene.
You see, the cicadas say and the tree frog
repeats the cacophonous chant, it is hot
and tomorrow is September and it is hot