Category: Pop Culture

Cicada Songs (for “Cicada Mania”)

They say your songs
portend the end of summer
just as chirping robins
usher in the spring air.

Listen to the sound
whirring, buzzing through
leaves of trees that shelter
the thrumming brood.

Insect monks chant
hymns of nature
for us and for
their silent females: “mate her.”

More musical than electric currents
that hum along power lines,
your symphony hovers,
guarding the sultry night like armored palatines.

Constant and pervasive,
we humans sometimes hear
sometimes ban your frequencies,
lulled to sleep by drums so dear.

Air conditioners and headphones
drown out your beautiful noise
but others sing with you
till Fall’s frost steals these little joys.

-DFG

From Paul Frank’s Language Jottings:

The cicada knows nothing of snow. Said of someone who’s ignorant or inexperienced. There’s also the word huigu, platypleura kaempferi, a kind of bright-colored cicada, and the saying huigu bu zhi chun qiu, the cicada is ignorant of spring or autumn, i.e., limited in experience or vision.

Here’s a story about oolong tea:

This type of tea, sometimes called “Oriental Beauty Tea” uses green leaf cicadas to suck on the plants before the leaves are harvested and fermented. Not only do the leaves have quite a variety of colors, but the taste of the tea is unique with its fruit and honey flavor.