Ode to cicadas: You came, you mated, you expired
As Brood X’s time ends, readers sing praises of the chorusing creatures
To a cicada (not a louse)
With all due respect to the Scottish poet Robert Burns and the end of the cicadas as explored in “Maryland has passed the point of peak cicadas. How much longer will they last?” (June 11):
The trees are suddenly quiet;
The cicadas have all gone.
Having ended their 17-year riot,
And left us leaves out on the lawn.
The rusted ends of the summer trees,
Now tell us that they mated.
They came and went just as they pleased,
Not knowing they were fated.
In 2038, will I be here,
To witness their return?
I guess and hope and sometimes fear,
If such a fate I’ll earn.
For both man and bug live and die,
And share the earth,
Not knowing why,
There’s love and death — and birth.
Thomas Ponton, Columbia
Loud, smelly, odd-looking and sacred
They were loud, they smelled, they looked odd, our dog ate them. The media had prepared us for them, letting us know that their 17-year hibernation was coming to an end and that our yards would be inundated by these unique insects. Their long wait between appearances is a survival technique. No predator can depend on them as a source of food. Without their long dormancy the species probably would have disappeared centuries ago. But they are here thanks to nature’s gift. Nature is awesome in the way she lures species to new levels of survival adaptation. We humans are no exception — perhaps we have been too good at survival so that nature feels the need to remind us, with tiny viruses, that we too are vulnerable to that delicate balance.
The laws of nature have fostered a diverse display of life around the earth, from sea cows to mosquitoes, from tigers to toads, from Oak trees to Kudzu. And if we are to believe the stories of nature all life that is or ever was, was once one — one cell of life somewhere on this planet eons ago. Nature’s creativity, nature’s big bang, took that cell and created an awesome diversity of life. Who could have imagined it?
So I listen to the noise of the cicadas, feel their aroma in my nose, watch as one lights on my shirt, and I know: They are my cousins — distant cousins. We had a common ancestor and thus there is a bond that I feel between us. We, both of us, are part of something greater than either of us, greater than either of our small minds can fully comprehend. I am standing on holy ground, and I realized that I am privileged to experience this moment. I stand in awe before the power that has led all species to their current place in our biosphere. And I wonder, does the cicada on my shirt share this reverence? I think she does.
Woody Eddins, Ellicott City
Sucking on roots in places
Where photons do not flow.
The stridency recedes
For 17 years of quarantine,
And in an unpredictable and violent world, I am solaced
By the regularity and reliability
Of the cicadas’ love making cyclicity.