The Message Comes Again in Afternoon When Cicada Move

in breaths. Unlike human lungs. Like wings, if feathers
fell as metal shavings on the shop floor to combine with dust

fine off the worker’s body, dust entering doors
and windows always open, even in winter. Look at the snow

twitch without rhythm. Look in air so cold it forms
a flame out of wind. The skin senses without you being able

to order it otherwise, just as the insects we assume
speak in summer by instinct are ready, willing. Inside the house,

the child works at piano lessons. Tonight, when she shows
her teacher she has mastered the songs she’s been given,

from the hollows, sinkholes, river, the insects crescendo
in what no one calls song even though it is, what they want,

want they need as much as food and water. In the background
they are always singing, so no one hears them apart

from the air in the trees, like ocean waves, the trains
along the river, the river itself. Disappears, returns, swells.