ohbloodyhell8

The sounds of the cicada were so loud on the way home tonight.  As I drove through campus toward the main exit, their noise filled my car, coming in through the open windows faster than the warm, muggy air could go out of them.  Even as I drove home on the six lane interstate highway, the chirping filled my car.  Their pulsating rhythmic sounds created an eerie mood for the sultry night.  In my mind’s eye I could see them swarming, about to attack my car and me, although they are not truly locusts.  Their song bounced back and forth between the trees lining the highway, a sound man’s dream for background noise in a movie by Uncle Stevie.

I thought of how many exoskeletons were in the trees surrounding my path home and how my sons would love to collect the hundreds that must be there.  Our yard only yields a humble crop of them, this year even fewer because of the many trips up and down the Japanese Maple tree during the boys’ summer adventures.  My sons enjoy collecting the discarded skins and creating little habitats for them, just as I did when I was young.

The saddest part of the cicada’s song is that it trumpets the passage of time.  They are singing even as I write this filling my ears with the hypnotic blast announcing the arrival of the dog days of summer.  Summer session is halfway over and back-to-school fliers are arriving in the mail.  Soon I’ll have the annual urge to buy school supplies for myself…just because through my work I’ve never stopped following the school calendar.  I’ll crave a new notebook and binder, a fun folder, and cool pencils.  I’ll want a new backpack, even though I have never used a backpack (messenger bags and the like are more my style).  I’ll start humming the old song, “School days, school days, dear old Golden Rule days….”

But tonight I’ll embrace the song of the cicada.  I’ll crack open my bedroom window, ignoring the muggy heat of this July night, and listen to the symphony of nature until it lulls me to sleep.