Little Singers in the Trees

An annual cicada's song is the quintessential music of August, the sonorous vocal offering of a tiny jeweled being that emerges from underground, sheds its nymph skin, climbs high into the light-filled trees and sings for a mere handful of days before expiring and returning to earth. It's a joyful and ecstatic element in the slow irrevocable turning of one season into another.

Only male cicadas sing, but oh how they do sing, vibrating the complex abdominal membranes called tymbals over and over again to generate a raspy tune that will attract a mate. I have a lot to learn about identifying cicadas, but I think this one may be the bigger Linne's cicada rather than a Dog-day cicada. Whichever one it was, my little visitor was absolutely gorgeous.

I often find abandoned cicada shells on poplar trees in the Two Hundred Acre Wood but always feel fortunate when I encounter a newborn in all its pastel green splendor, sometimes still clinging to its discarded exoskeleton. Imagos (adults) darken as their new exoskeletons harden and wings expand, but there is a fair bit of variation in coloration. Some will retain greenish wings all the days of their lives.

For the last week or two, Beau and I have been rescuing cicadas from sidewalks, driveways and roadways and moving them to safe perches in hedgerows and mature trees where they will not be trampled by pedestrians and moving cars. On early walks, we keep a eye out for them, and we always encounter at least two or three before we arrive home again. Evenings, I take my mug of tea out to the garden and listen to cicada serenades for a while before the sun goes down. I shall be sad when I go outside one night, and there are no cicada songs to be heard.

Call it "cicada mind" and cherish the notion. Our task is one of cultivating just this kind of patience, acceptance, rapt attention and unfettered Zen sensibility, of embracing our allotted days fully and singing wherever we happen to be, then dissolving effortlessly back into the fabric of the world when the time comes.