Cicada Cycle

• I. The Dream
• Seventeen years you sleep:
• unseen,
• burrowed, buried,
• deep in a dream
• of your becoming.
• Never hurried,
• exactly on time,
• resurrected out of your tomb
• you climb.

• II. Cicada
• Fire-eyed cicada: cellophane wings
• and torso densely armored, clings
• to the tipsy coreopsis, bent
• on shedding — then
• emerging, spent
• but newly made,
• he leaves the shell of himself behind
• and looks for shade.

• III. The Song of the Cicada
• The song of the cicada hums
• heavy in the heat.
• Like smoke of incense burning in
• the temple — thick,
• ubiquitous and weighty —
• it obscures all lesser things,
• subsumes the whispered prayers,
• the grief and groaning,

• absolving and absorbing all
• in its own measured moaning.

Declaration

• The prosperous pines,
• lupines,
• lavender,
• spring their new greenness
• after much gray
• weight of rain.
• Spires, that will be blossom
• or needle,
• stretch in a vertical
• declaration: light will come —
• to make of soddenness a sudden
• sweet anthesis into nectar,
• scent.

Snug as a Bug

Amy Imbody is an author and educator whose writing reflects her interest in the natural places of her home in Virginia, the mysteries of faith, the children, and other “twigs” on her family tree, and on topics related to “Redemptive Education,” of which she is the founder. Her essays on parenting and education are published in the biweekly Lorien Wood Leader.

Little Levi

Her children’s literature includes an award-winning book, Snug as a Bug; a new release, Little Levi; and poems in children’s literary magazines such as Cricket and Ladybug. Most recently, Amy’s poetry has appeared in First Things magazine, as well as in her new book, Gathering Seed.