Of Cicadas
By Luke Allan
A wood is a collection of distances between trees. America is a collection of distances between cicadas.
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If you stop where you are and just listen, if you simply stop and listen to the sound of the cicadas in the trees, you have tasted true disappointment.
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If cicadas made a more beautiful sound, America would be a different country.
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For every one cicada, there are ten cicadas.
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Wittgenstein said, “whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.” Try telling that to cicadas.
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The absence of cicadas is the honey of winter.
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Deep inside every rock there is silence. Deep inside every cicada there is America.
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Cicadas. What do they want?
Source: Poetry (June 2025)