Desert Cicadas Haibun - Sharon Suzuki-Martinez

It’s a Sunday afternoon in July, so the cicadas are out merrymaking in the mesquite trees off our balcony. The heat and humidity turns them into armies of disembodied electric shavers. These big handsome buzzy insects inspired poetic thoughts of immortality among the Chinese, while the Japanese came to the opposite conclusion in their haiku by equating cicadas with the fleetingness of life.

Once, I gave a buzzing flashing plastic cicada keychain to my mom who had lived all her life in cicada-free Hawaii. The odd bug effigy delighted her and she brought it on all of her trips to Las Vegas with my dad. She believed the cicada was her lucky charm that could bring forth great rivers of fat nickels pouring from the slot machines. Often it did. Her cicada vanished when she died during one Vegas trip, eleven years ago. My own belief is that listening closely to cicadas mows down any bad feelings overgrown in one’s heart: anxiety, shame, rage, grief—all cleanly weed-whacked away.

Trees trill electric

in the heavy summer heat

singing us alive.

Originally published by BAP Quarterly, Winter 2009

Sharon Suzuki-Martinez won the Washington Prize for her latest book, The Loneliest Whale Blues (The Word Works), and the MVP Prize for her first book, The Way of All Flux (New Rivers Press). Her micro-chapbook is A Glimpse of Birds over O’odham Land (Rinky Dink Press). She lives in Tempe, Arizona on the traditional homeland of the Akimel O’otham. SharonSuzukiMartinez.com