Apache Cicada: A Sonnet from the Sonoran Desert and Ancient Greece

In the deep South and up the East Coast of America, this is the year that Brood II of the seventeen-year cicada emerges. These bugs live underground for over a decade and a half, then boil to the surface where they make a lot of racket, make a little love, do no real harm, and then die, leaving their offspring to burrow back into the dirt and start marking time.

In the Sonoran Desert, which includes Southern Arizona where I grew up, we have something called the Apache Cicada. These guys appear every summer around the solstice where they boil to the surface, make a lot of racket, make a little love, do no real harm, and then die, leaving their offspring to burrow back into the dirt and start marking time. They also leave their molted skins clinging to tree branches, crackly little chitinous exoskeletons that make a very satisfying crunch between thumb and forefinger. They are sometimes called "rain bugs" because they seem to emerge just prior to the summer showers.

In addition to delivering a bolus-dose of nostalgia for my desert childhood, all this talk about cicadas reminds me of the story of Eunomos (Greek for "Good Name"). In Greek mythology, he was a Jimmy Henddrix-level cithara player who entered a competition only to have a string snap during a crucial arpeggio. This was the day before roadies so no one stood by to hand him a fresh axe. Instead, the myth tells us that a nearby cicada leapt onto the lyre and sustained the note, allowing Eunomos to bear the gree. (I think the prize involved a record contract as the winner of Ancient Greece Has Talent or Grecian Idol, but the sources are unclear on this.) Because of its annual emergence from the earth, the cicada symbolized resurrection. The Greeks and Romans considered the insect's wild, droning song an expression of religious ecstasy and held them sacred to Apollo.

Anyway, I pondered all of that and attempted to put it into sonnet form. You can read the result below.

Apache Cicada: A Desert Sonnet

Dry tymbal-click grits song on slate-hard heat
And rends the weft and woof of warmth-warped air.
Sound pounds, rebounds, resounds, redounds, repeats
Staccato scrape that whets spines sharp and spare.

My soul's string snaps short, twangs, and silence stills
Sweet praise I sought to render to my Lord,
Frustrates the proffered offering of my skills.
Dry, chitinous crackling chokes the sundered chord.

The locust leaps upon my wounded lyre,
Sustains the stifled note to swelling praise.
Rain-bringer, singer, you who never tire:
Draw out the strangled chord of my brief days.

O God, let desert sever self-sought fame,
And sing through me instead the one Good Name.

Laodicean Sonnet

The idea for this sonnet began months ago when I first istened to Malcolm Guite's sermon,  "Not a Chocolate Jesus: Learning from Tom Waits and Johnny Cash". In the opening lines of that message, Malcolm calls for "some piece of sacred art, on the side of a cathedral, maybe, painted very beautifully at the far end of King's College Chapel, somewhere like that. I would love to see the image of Jesus spewing lukewarm Christianity out of his mouth in disgust, a flood of saccharine platitudes, a spewing out of absolute disgust of prosperity gospels all flowing out there, all those versions of Christianity which are based around, 'I'm all right, Jack,' the very things that Jesus is specifically criticizing in that passage in Revelation where he says, 'You say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.'" The image arrested my thought, and while I do not  mistake my sonnet for great art or my blog for the wall of a mighty cathedral, I couldn't get away from that picture. The first line came fairly quickly. I worked the rest out on weeks' worth of morning and evening walks through my neighborhood with my dog. I offer it here for what it's worth, perhaps as no more than an introduction to Malcolm's sermon for people who might not otherwise have known about it.

Laodicean Sonnet

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. - Revelation 3.16

"If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. I am certain there must be a patent American article on the market which will suit you far better." - C. S. Lewis

I saw the face of Christ fish belly-pale

And bloodless blanched. Five wounds in mottled skin

Glowed livid. From his bowels keened forth a wail.

Bright blazing eyes now banked, glazed, gazed within.

Chest's sudden spasm under golden sash

Belched forth and splattered plastic platitudes.

From white robe's hem now ricocheted and splashed

Best lives, bland smiles, be-happy-attitudes.

From wide mouth many waters thundered forth

Great half-chewed chunks of saltless sentiment.

Gobs, globs of branded worship without worth

Spewed, spattered, spat in torrents of torment.

'Midst Heaven's host dry heaves declared a stop.

Christ wiped his mouth. An angel grabbed a mop.