17

Seventeen years here. Here in the dark. No sound. Almost no sound. There’s the scurrying of course. Is it scurrying? No. It’s certainly, what would you call it, footfall? Yes, somewhere up there, dull undefined footfall. And the sounds here—scratchings, scrapings—all the sounds that reach this point below, which make their traffic through the leaf litter and the soil into this rotten retreat, if that’s what you could call it, are so vague as to be indistinguishable. In fact, you might say, that we’ve been here so long, that trying to distinguish one sound from the other is nigh on impossible. The result of a kind of apathy of waiting I suppose… what else would you call it? As sure as the diurnal relief of night giving birth to day (we know nothing of these matters here), the equinoctial marking of the seasons pass, the years unfold unnoticed.

Year after year of lying here
A serenading I would go.

Nymphs. That’s what they call us. And its not that anyone is around to take notice. Oh, look, those bloody nymphs are at it again! Nope, we’re not at anything. Actually the contrary is true: we're busy doing nothing, whatsoever. Waiting. Biding our time. Biding our time whilst nature awaits our deplorable gift. And as sure as the spring and autumn equinox measures the growing and shortening of the days, we wait. Getting fat.

Year after year of lying here
A courting I would go.

You can imagine it… complacency, boredom—call it what you will—a kind of tedium sets in, and the mind bluffs, beguiles, loses focus, is hooked on the mulling over of… is imagining (if such things are imaginable) is calculating the passage of time, the passing of the winter and summer solstice. One year, five years, ten years, fifteen years. It all the same. It all blends. Here in the dark. Hardly able to move. Breathing, feeling the tightly hugging earthy grave.

Year after year of lying here
A mating I would go.

Suddenly a shout goes out, a rasping call, there’s the scraping of carapace, against… something; the scratching of legs amongst grit, panic abounds and incredibly, after seventeen lonely years below, we claw with one ambition, tunnel and haul ourselves up—up to the drying rays of the sun, and with twitchings, and palpitations, crack out of dry casings to stretch our fresh formed slender still-damp wings. Flexing to yield our serenade of eros and eloquence that lasts for one night only, we fight up tree and branch, scramble higher, yes, higher, to find a mate, to sing, to audaciously flex our new formed wings, to seal our fate.

After seventeen years of lying here
I’m dead of course.

Having found a mate, eggs laid, the seventeen year periodic cicada drops dead to the floor. Like a brittle carpet formed from twiglets, the cicadas lie crisp underfoot and return their macabre gift—the largest dose of fertilizer in the natural world; as eggs hatch, nymphs traffic through the leaf litter and soil, to their rotten retreat below, in the deep dark wood.

Seventeen years I’ll be lying here
Getting fat.