The cicadas are back today, or maybe it’s just that I’m outside, in a better position to hear them.  Their shimmering sound is stereophonic, flowing from one side of the yard to the other. 

How evocative it is! How it distills the summer. It is chorus and verse, call and response. It is fecundity and humidity and all the other parts of the season that make us (or at least me) feel so alive. 

Today, however, it’s competing with the sound of chain saws, which it often does these days. But I’m tuning out that white noise and focusing on the cicadas instead.

(Photo of cicadas from last year’s Brood X.)