-This poem reflects on a cicada shell as a sign of transformation in high summer, where what has been left behind still carries the truth of what emerged.
Clinging to the rough tree bark,
the empty shape remains behind,
a pale and brittle ghost of noon,
split open where the body rose.
The limbs still hold their careful curve,
the small hooked feet still grip the wood,
as if the shell had not yet learned,
the life within it had moved on.
No song remains in this dry form,
no pulse, no wing, no summer cry,
and still it keeps the mark of change,
the husk that proves what left was real.
So much of high summer lives here,
not only in sound, but in shedding,
the season leaving on the tree,
the shape of what it has outgrown.