My love for the sound of cicadas is a recurring motif in my writing.

It stems from childhood summers spent with my grandparents in the country, the most idyllic days of my existence.

In thinking of Earth Day, my first inclination is to write on In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

That verse, Genesis 3:19 in the King James, conjures images from At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Here’s Bill Bryson’s observations of country churchyards in England where churches seem to be sinking into the ground: Think about it. A country parish like this has an average of 250 people in it, which translates into roughly a thousand adults deaths per century, plus a few thousand more poor souls who didn’t make it to maturity. Multiply that by the number of centuries that the church has been here and you can see that what you have here is not eighty or a hundred burials but probably something more on the order of, say, twenty thousand … that’s a lot of mass, needless to say. It’s why the ground has risen three feet.

In other words … we are the earth.

Times being the pandemic they are, death surrounds us. April 22 also marks the anniversary of the sudden passing of my husband’s father at the age of fifty-four. My husband was just twelve.

But I do not wish to turn Earth Day into a death knell.

I write about cicadas today because they lie in the earth and emerge—some after seventeen years—to sing their song of life.

In the thick woods and byways of North Carolina, from May through September, it’s a deafening cacophony; but as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so there is beauty in the ear of the listener.

In honor of Earth Day, a “found poem,” of sorts, from a former blog post I wrote, entitled Cicada Rhythms:

The song of cicadas
calls to me
from long ago
from sultry summers
in the country
where narrow dirt roads
keep an ominous forest
from encroaching
on rustic homeplaces
from tiny cemeteries
where baby after baby
is buried
under white monuments
adorned with lambs
at the old church
just around the bend.
The song is of the ages
of the rising and falling
of generations
all of us coming and going
in our time
a song reverberating
from oaks, pines,
cypresses
across canals
teeming with frogs
and turtles
to white-tailed deer
standing along the fields
at dusk.
It is the bright song
of the sun
of hope
of continuity.
It is the dark song
of the night
oddly comforting—
something out in the blackness
is vibrant, alive
maybe keeping watch
while children
drift off to sleep.
It is the sound
of safety
of stability
of belonging.
Calling, calling
the crescendo mirrors
the rhythm of life
brimming with promise
echoing eternity.
When I hear it
I am a child again
no matter
how many summers
have come and gone.
Every spring as I mark
another year of existence
I listen
for the first rattle.
You’re back! my heart sings.
Ah, but we were here all along
they might say
if cicadas had words.
There’s a lot of living
and loving
yet to do.
You have today.
Carry on.

The cicada isn’t exactly a beetle, but a “true bug.”
They symbolize renewal, rebirth, transformation, change.
They can disappear for many years to return en masse.
Their buzzing call is made by the males, who begin singing soon after emergence.