Tasty Cicadas! …poems

Aesomes

The sneck’s aye sweirt and ayont
a doverin cratur wit a lit o the lowe
they ken ilka gadge on the bowe
bi the soond o thir foot-fa
glisk the skyrie lamp
hingin on the smittie ceilin
a spreckelt green plaunt is deein
a wandert bairn greets
aneath thon laich an gowstie lift
at lang an last the onfa.

Loners

The door-latch is always stubbon
beyond it dozes a beast
tinged by the fire
they know who is walking
the curve of the road
by their footsteps alone
glance at the fancy lamp
hanging from the sooty ceiling
a green and speckled plant withers
a child who has wandered cries
beneath a long low sky
and at last the snow comes on.

Brett Ortler
The Cave of Swallows

At first they look like leaves
swept into a cyclone.
The swallows wheel around, and up,
then full-fledged flight out of the cave,
past the last ledge and away
from the tourists and traffic.
Now they are above the trees
and climbing, a swift stream
heading up, and up. They do not turn back.
They have lived within the earth, as we live on it,
and know the good which comes from deep water
and the fire one can see
even in a sky with no stars.
But they also know
there is a time to break away
if only to see
how far the world will let you go.

IX
A turtle, with a blue-green shell, suns itself on a rock underneath the lookout. It slowly stretches its head—unfolding its leathery accordion of a neck—to look up at me. When I move to try and take a closer look back, it slides off the rock into the water, and a spume of silt curlicues like a silky question mark. Of course, I know the question. But do you have an answer?

X.
When the Painted Lady butterfly—Painted Ladies are always friendly—lands on my hand, she decorates my skin like a bright, three-dimensional tattoo for over a mile. She uncoils her sharp tongue, clever as a coat hanger, to taste the salt on my skin, and when the wind picks up, I feel the tiny pincer grips of her feet dig in so that even as her wings riffle in the breeze, she holds fast, until we finally part ways before crossing the suspension bridge.

XI.
On the bridge, there is a message. Someone has written:
If I can’t be
with her I’ll
be there for her.
I’ll wait forever.

Someone else writes:
Fuck that emo bullshit.

XII.
In the old riverbed underneath the suspension bridge, where oyster mushrooms unfold themselves life ivory fans on fallen tree trunks, and the hoof prints of deer send mixed messages regarding direction, I find a foot-long earthworm, damp coils gently pulsing in the shade. What rhythms, I wonder, does it answer to? Does its unconscious rippling open and close to the same magnetic metronome that makes our own hearts open and close? Why doesn’t it find its own largeness, its raw vulnerability, more disturbing?

XIII.
From the West, the river shapes itself into a large “V,” punctuated by a small pulsing line of something, like a blinking cursor, at the very tip or point. As it presses forward, I see that it’s a muskrat, brisk metronome of a tail rhythmically swinging…

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Cicadas: They’re Back!

“Cicadas are among the world’s most palatable insects,” according to Dr. Remington. He was talking
about how 17- year insects with greasy-looking wings taste to predators like birds. He plans a taste test later this year, for blue jays and starlings.

But he is also collecting cicadas from the Sleeping Giant preserve and plans to boil one or two so that he can taste essentially what the birds taste. He said that in a week or two, he would serve guests stir-fried cicadas.

Dr. Remington noted that insects are on the menu in northern Japan, in inland provinces where people do not get enough fish and meat protein. The favorite food insect there, he discovered in World War II, is the yellow jacket. But he said that adult cicadas were also served.
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Tasty 17-Year Cicadas

Serves 2 amply

1 cup freshly emerged cicadas
2 quarts clean boiling water
salt to taste

1. Gather cicadas from tree trunks and shrubbery, just after they have come out of their nymphal shells; they should still be soft and whitish, like soft-shell crabs.
2. Drop the cicadas into water after it has come to a full boil; water may be salted.
3. After 12 minutes, drain and season to taste.
4. As a variation, try older cicadas, 30 to 60 minutes after they emerge; they are still tasty, but have hardened and darkened. They should have their wings and legs snipped off after boiling.
5. For still another variation, gather nymphs while they are still living underground or just after they emerge.
6. Boil as above.
7. Use boiled nymphs in much the same way you would use cooked shrimp. For example, stir-fry in a wok, combing with favorite spices, vegetables and sauces.

Nutritional analysis: High in protein, fat and glycogen, the form in which sugar is stored to provide energy.—Jean Follain

Translated from the French by Roddy Lumsden

Blackberries

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle,
flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous
flocks—
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from
within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in
a Chinese screen.

—Sylvia Plath