Listening to Cicadas

Listening to Cicadas

by | Nov 11, 2025 | Nature Poems, Poems, Poetry

Listening To Cicadas

Thousands of soda chargers detonating simultaneously 
at the one party
*
The aural equivalent of the smell of cheese fermented
in the stomach of a slaughtered goat 
*
The aural equivalent of downing eight glasses 
of caffeinated alcohol
*
Temperature: the cicada’s sound-editing software
*
At noon, treefuls of noise: jarring, blurred, magnified—
sound being pixelated
*
The audio equivalent of flash photography and strobe lighting
hitting disco balls and mirror walls
*
The audio equivalent of lightning hitting your face
*
The sound of cellophane being crumpled in the hands
of sixteen thousand four-year-olds
*
The aural equivalent of platform shoes
*
The aural equivalent of skinny jeans 
*
All the accumulated cases of tinnitus suffered
by fans of Motörhead and Pearl Jam
*
Microphone feedback overlaid with the robotic fluctuations
of acid trance music
*
The stultifying equivalent of listening to the full chemical name 
for the human protein titin which consists of 189,819 letters 
and takes three-and-a-half hours to pronounce
*
The aural equivalent of garish chain jewellery 
*
A feeling as if your ear drums had expanded into the percussing surfaces
of fifty-nine metallic wobbleboards
*
The aural equivalent of ant juice 
*
Days of summer: a sonic treadwheel 

November by Charles L Cleaveland

by | Nov 4, 2025 | Male Poets, Nature Poems, November Poems, Poems, Poetry, Poets

When thistle-blows do lightly float
About the pasture-height,
And shrills the hawk a parting note,
And creeps the frost at night,
Then hilly ho! though singing so,
And whistle as I may,
There comes again the old heart pain
Through all the livelong day.

In high wind creaks the leafless tree
And nods the fading fern;
The knolls are dun as snow-clouds be,
And cold the sun does burn.
Then ho, hollo! though calling so,
I can not keep it down;
The tears arise unto my eyes,
And thoughts are chill and brown.

Far in the cedars’ dusky stoles,
Where the sere ground-vine weaves,
The partridge drums funereal rolls
Above the fallen leaves.
And hip, hip, ho! though cheering so,
It stills no whit the pain;
For drip, drip, drip, from bare branchtip,
I hear the year’s last rain.

So drive the cold cows from the hill,
And call the wet sheep in;
And let their stamping clatter fill
The barn with warming din.
And ho, folk, ho! though it is so
That we no more may roam,
We still will find a cheerful mind
Around the fire at home!

November By Emily Dickinson

by | Nov 3, 2025 | Emily Dickinson, Female Poets, Life Poems, Nature Poems, November Poems, Poems, Poets

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.

 

A few incisive mornings,
A few ascetic eyes, —
Gone Mr. Bryant’s golden-rod,
And Mr. Thomson’s sheaves.

 

Still is the bustle in the brook,
Sealed are the spicy valves;
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The eyes of many elves.

 

Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!

Autumn by John Keats Poem

Autumn by John Keats Poem

by | Oct 6, 2025 | Emerald Book Club, Life Poems, Nature Poems, Poetic Flows Podcast, Poetry

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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June’s Coming by John Burroughs

June’s Coming by John Burroughs

by | Jun 3, 2025 | Nature Poems, Poems, Poetic Flows Podcast, Poetry, Summer Poems

Now have come the shining days
When field and wood are robed anew,
And o’er the world a silver haze
Mingles the emerald with the blue.

Summer now doth clothe the land
In garments free from spot or stain—
The lustrous leaves, the hills untanned,
The vivid meads, the glaucous grain.

The day looks new, a coin unworn,
Freshly stamped in heavenly mint;
The sky keeps on its look of morn;
Of age and death there is no hint.

How soft the landscape near and far!
A shining veil the trees infold;
The day remembers moon and star;
A silver lining hath its gold.

Again I see the clover bloom,
And wade in grasses lush and sweet;
Again has vanished all my gloom
With daisies smiling at my feet.

Again from out the garden hives
The exodus of frenzied bees;
The humming cyclone onward drives,
Or finds repose amid the trees.

At dawn the river seems a shade—
A liquid shadow deep as space;
But when the sun the mist has laid,
A diamond shower smites its face.

The season’s tide now nears its height,
And gives to earth an aspect new;
Now every shoal is hid from sight,
With current fresh as morning dew.

Year’s End by Richard Wilbur

Year’s End by Richard Wilbur

by | Jan 1, 2025 | Life Poems, Nature Poems, Poems, Poetic Flows Podcast, Poetry, Winter Poems

Year’s End by Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year,   

And night is all a settlement of snow;

From the soft street the rooms of houses show   

A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,   

Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin   

And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake

The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell   

And held in ice as dancers in a spell   

Fluttered all winter long into a lake;   

Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,   

They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns   

Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone   

A million years. Great mammoths overthrown   

Composedly have made their long sojourns,   

Like palaces of patience, in the gray

And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise   

But slept the deeper as the ashes rose

And found the people incomplete, and froze   

The random hands, the loose unready eyes   

Of men expecting yet another sun

To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.   

We fray into the future, rarely wrought

Save in the tapestries of afterthought.

More time, more time. Barrages of applause   

Come muffled from a buried radio.

The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

Copyright Credit: Richard Wilbur, “Year’s End” from Collected Poems 1943-2004