SEMI

Semi (cicada) are intriguing creatures. They spend up to 17 years underground as grubs fending in the dark as they grow, slowly changing into a more functional form that after so many years compels them to dig straight up - whatever that is - at one specific point in time, dig themselves up out of the ground one night and in the dark climb the nearest climbable object that their new forms can firmly clamp onto, then during that night they shrug out of that form into their new one, leaving hollow amber ghosts everywhere on the sides of trees and weeds and anything else rough enough to have clamped on to; then they hang there longer while their new form dries out enough to fly them off into daylight on awkward papery wings that blunder them into windows and screens and people, anything that happens to be in the way of their frantically busy unaimed flight, lumbering through the air to find a momentary perch from which they can screech the shrill staccato of their anciently new brief opera only so as to find a mate, trying here then trying there, trying anywhere; being mouthless for in this ephemeral full-time frenzy there is no time to eat, their only quest is to mate and so they sing and so they mate from the deepest hunger, then the eggs are quickly deposited in the ground and the semi die: in a matter of days their new ghosts litter the ground they rose from. Most of their life is spent passing through times and shapes in the dark of the earth getting ready for a mere flash of what we call life, which is the least part of theirs. Interesting perspective on the deep priorities of existence…