Amanda Boyanowski-Morin

CICADA’S SIREN SONG

I circle trees clockwise late June till early September

searching for cicadas. Running my fingers on bark and plucking

exuviae off branches, placing them in my palm until it is full

and I transfer empty husks to a mason jar in my backpack.

I walk miles around neighborhood trees, waiting

to glimpse a nymph crawling up,

up to where it will cling

and split, a pastel adult hanging until it pumps its wings alive

with hemolymph to harden

body and wings, readying itself for flight.

While considering the incalculable odds to see one molt in a normal year

I have taken at least 73 home with me.

I have one that has died early in the process. It is unbalanced, stony.

Another that died right before emerging.

Out of respect for the dead

these are held separately from the others.

Sometimes I see the lichen green of a fresh wing, still curled at the tip

and I know I was close. I keep circling.

On the day I saw a nymph climbing an Ash tree in a park I shook

as I called my husband

Bring my camera, camp stool, a flashlight and some water.

I’m not leaving until this is finished.

I stood on that canvas stool photographing through dusk.

My pelvis trembled and I fell, I caught myself with my right arm

in a knot and my shoulder gave a familiar dislocating pop.

I climbed back up.

This was the end of cicada season.

/

The thing is – if a cicada doesn’t make it through this complex transformation

it dies. Ideally, it goes from larvae to nymph to mind-blowing siren song of summer

whose tymbal can be heard to call its brood from a mile away.

In just over an hour and a half I saw one living being recreate

itself into a completely unfamiliar and exquisite version of itself.

Am I feeling out the right soil temperature to transform?

It is fully dark now.

I pack up my things and leave.

This molt I do not collect.

Amanda Boyanowski-Morin is a poet, parent, and partner living in Rhode Island. She can be found in the woods with her service dog, Rowan, or among the intertidal zone with a field guide. Amanda's work primarily focuses on the body and its connection with an ever-changing Anthropocene.