Sestina Magicicada

 

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By Jenn Mercer

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In the withering walk from car to door
I half-stumbled, shivering on an exposed root,
which sat in the same deep January cold,
waiting for the sap to rise and wake.
If only that was how I grew old,
or else skipped all winters like the cicada.

 

Each shuffling step a footfall in a cicada
dream. I am the giant behind the door,
less known than its mythical mother old,
who left young nymphs, sucking at tree roots,
who will never see them rise and wake —
their summer thrum melting memories of the cold.

 

Do they forget the years in the cold?
It is hard to see a living cicada,
The countless nymphs buried before they can wake,
seventeen years of scratching the hard, dirt door,
steadily tunneling upwards from the sweet, dark root;
Not feeling the sun's warmth until they're old.

 

Climbing, they leave the yellowed skins of old,
freed to strum the chant to banish cold,
highest branches hold bodies fed by the root.
What shakes the coma of the winter cicada,
and brings its husk to the summer door?
What is there in me that cannot wake?

 

Perhaps one night is not enough to wake.
Leave me buried in blankets till I am old.
Turn off the light and lock the door.
I am burning with fever and freezing cold;
waiting to drop my skin like a cicada
shell and trace this sickness to its root.

 

Like a fresh weaned kitten, I paw and root
in blankets till I can't help but wake.
Snow is too quiet, I need the cicada's
song. It is loud enough to reach old
bones, rekindling fires that have long gone cold.
Come summer chanter singing, to open my door.

 

Cicadas start to sing when they are old.
They learn the roots while waiting to wake;
Cold graves cast away behind the earthen door.