Summer seems within reach, so I can’t resist a selection from the summer archives.
Cicadas
Their last earthbound form clings
hollow gargoyle relic of claw and eye
split with surgical precision to release
the winged adult.
If I held one of these amber
husks to my ear, would a dusty
song of waning summer pulse
like the tide in a scrolled shell?
Rae Spencer 
I love your poem.
Perhaps you would like to read a story I’ve just written about cicadas in my blog:
Nimblenoms.blogspot.com
Best wishes, Eric Shackle (retired Sydney journalist).
Heard in late summer but rarely seen!
Wonderful photographs and the poem is uniquely descriptive…I especially love the last stanza!
Thank you!
Forgot to mention the great video! Enjoyed so much. Thanks!
You are “pretty awesome!” The poem fantastic and the pictures so beautiful! I highly doubt luck has anything to do with either…
Thank you! 🙂
Great photos! (I’ve never seen or heard a cicada before). And the poem is excellent!
Never heard one! Now I’m adding “cicada video, including sound” to my summer wish list…
In the meantime, this YouTube video is pretty awesome:
Beautiful pictures of the cicadas, I still have to see one when I have the camera handy. 🙂
Thank you! (I honestly believe these photos are mostly a product of luck…)
Luck and knowledge i would add. 🙂
When living in Ann Arbor, we witnessed the 17-year cicadas in 2005. This particular group won’t be seen as adults again until 2022.
I’m pretty sure that all of the ones I’ve seen are annual cicadas. We have them in the yard every year, but never a true swarm. Just three or four at a time. I’m kind of jealous, when I hear about the periodic emergences. It must be an amazing sight!
I have never seen one, how big are they?
The ones I’ve seen have been an inch or two in the body, with longer wings. I didn’t have much luck finding them until a few summers ago, and I’m still not great at spotting them. And I’ve never found one in the process of shedding its skin, which has become almost an obsession for me. Maybe this summer!