Mid-morning. The hummingbirds
out before the sun rose
singing ruby throated songs
flitting from tree to tree
with the unmistakable humm
have disappeared and the cicadas at center stage, their hearts
ignited by the sun's heat
rub their feet together
so vigorously all other sounds fade,
even the chain saws have stopped.
In this non-silence cicada-song
amplifies into a single white note
a hallucination in the blinding light.
Yesterday I complained of the saws
and compressors, all that energy
bouncing off the bare mountain
bare beneath the dead trees
towering in their charred splendor
remnants of a forest burned
in a tidal wave of fire.
The cicadas hover above the new growth
a river of oaks, oh so many
even the old paths are washed away.
The counterpoint of lush green growth
and stiletto black stalks of Ponderosas
is a cacophony of life and death
broken by a butterfly, a monarch,
yellow and black with her elegant flutter
floating in between,
the dead branches of the pinons
a white calligraphy against the mountain's curve.
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