Anxious Sounding Trees

1 The cicadas drone 
2 against the neighborhood
3 and its streaming, high-def 
4 noise pollution.
5 The collateral damage is 
6 singing birds 
7 drowned.
8
9 For more and more,
10 lost in the world, 
11 finding silence
12 is rare 
13 commodity 
14 an old man might say 
15 only 
16 death 
17 offers.
18
19 One single cicada screams
20 long past the others.
21 Abruptly stopping,
22 the echoes of the Earth lead us 
23 into stillness,
24 as though the weight of the world
25 lifts with a breeze.
26
27 The whirligig up-draft
28 only lasts so long.
29 Then the rotten, 
30 superhet, 
31 chorus-sound 
32 fills the cul-de-sac’s
33 sub-consciousness. 
34 Silence is once again
35 hard to find.

5.11.18