The pines stretch in a vertical declaration: “Light will come”

Two poems by Amy Imbody

Author

Publish Date

Aug. 17, 2016

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.

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.