Cicada Circus Poem by Joseph T. Renaldi

The Cicada Circus begins in underground burrows
at night when the temperature is right,
and climb trees with a pulsating sound
easily attracting female mates within sight.

The cicadas with their buzzing and clicking noise
use different calls to express alarm or attract a mate
and are famous for their penchant for disappearing
and reappearing in force years later on a similar date.

Within a span of a few active and noisy weeks,
the Cicada Circus will come and quickly go,
their group transforming from nymphs to adults,
attaching themselves to plants high and low.

The nymphs, with black markings and red eyes
transmute- and with their exoskeltons shed,
ghostlike creatures are immediately revealed,
and still their eyes remain a haunting red.

After the cicadas eggs have been laid on the twigs,
semi-lucent husks litter the ground in tiers,
memoralizing the Cicada Circus that was-
and will begin again in seventeen (17) years.