Do you have tinnitus? Well, I do. Maybe that’s why these buggers bug me so. We get the 17-year cicadas in droves around here, and in off years, like this summer, we still get enough to be annoying. Here’s hoping the noises in your head are more pleasant.
Cicada
song drills into
my skull, the noise unwinds
a hot thread–
along these nerves.
Harsh, grating
jackhammer drone
never fades.
Like trepanation
it’s pressure incessant
that bores into my brain
to riddle
concentration.
All VERB
and REVERB.
Though dark descends,
silence is rewired;
buzz doesn’t end
but phantoms
away, recedes
like echoes.
Your whine’s
an auger that emptied
my head.
© Ellen Wade Beals, 2003
