Anthropocene Nocturne
Because there is no other world
I’m scared of losing, I’m learning
to say I’m home here as much as I can,
whatever the weather decides
should become of the maple,
however the new cicadas decide
to embroider the dusk.
When I say the cicadas are new,
what I mean is I’ve finally seen them.
Before, when I heard their throats
lay claim to longing, I heard only
the traffic of mouths. Now I can read
the air inscribed with dread
and with what survives it,
though the weight of wind
on a wing can be quarried stone.
In a true nocturne, perhaps
the heat wave should not be mentioned,
nor how the world we want
has afflicted the world we were given:
cement and topsoil, diesel
and leaf-cleaned air. But tonight
there is barely a breeze,
and now the cicadas sleep,
and the closest the heat-stilled air can come
to song is a sound I confuse with noise
until something inside me quiets.