Cicada Days

 

The sun is bright and harsh in the 

Oklahoma sky. The grasses sway in the heat.

The first leaves dry and float to the ground. The cicadas thrum and throb with the heat.

The trees struggle to provide shade. Everything metal is too hot to touch.

The pecans begin to dry and their hulls brown and split. 

Dragonflies spin and swoop and rest on dry grass stems.

Children swelter until their sweet faces flush with heat.

Children go swimming in the early morning.

We watch the apples ripen.  Spiders set up webs in broad daylight.

Butterflies flutter across the yard. Cicadas buzz and drone.

 

     Thistle blooms. The last nasturtiums fade.

The farmers line up huge rounds of hay.

Follow the barbed wire to fall.