**Every Seventeen Years...*

    I was kindly invited to participate in a Cicada Celebration here in Kingston, NY by the venerable Mikhail Horowitz, comic poet extraordinaire. This was my contribution to the evening's festivities:

Dirt Nap

Red-eyed, you pass the woods near the bridge,

head home to the man you'll probably spend

the rest of your life with.

It took years to come around to this,

years for you to see his voice,

to be silent, let your future's next sound

reach your translucent ears.

Boomerang lovers, cicadas return

from their long dirt nap,

bleary buzz alerting the media

to their impending orgy,

crackling hum like your Long Island

high tension lines, green summer evenings

cruising the Parkways, stalking the

wild wine and cheese.

At seventeen, weekends an eternity,

there was that one you looked for

fifth period A-days, the blonde

with the John Denver glasses

or the red-headed bass player,

sometimes the chorus teacher himself.

You never had a chance. Electric

lattice framed the stars that

rivetted the night in place, and past that--

Cicadas, bumper to bumper on the branches,

don't waste a moment of their brief romantic lives.

They know who knows what seventeen summers

more might bring, what one small slap on

the snooze button could cost, how summer's

lease expires without mercy.

CAR 6/9/13