and makes the coyote pant.
A solitary buzz gnaws the silence,
drawn up late by the unseasonable heat.
He has risen out of the sanctuary ground,
the sepulcher of his birth, one lonely cicada
calling out longingly for a mate
who was eaten by a cedar wax wing weeks ago.
He shouldn't be here now.
He should have stayed under another year or so.
There is none to answer his call and respond with like desire.
How sad a sentence of so many years that ends
by being solitary still, even above ground,
met only by the rattle of dried leaves
and the brief acknowledgement of a passing coyote.
The coyote stops and turns and stares,
cocks it's head toward the futile buzzing,
then trots into the woods and is gone.
The cicada buzzes ever louder until
it falls to the ground, exhausted and ignored.
Not even bird food, it rots back
into the ground from which it arose.
Back home, at rest.
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