Cicadas fly up off the ground into the trees, their iridescent wings little cathedral windows seeking refuge for mating.

Their lives what we call a series of stagecraft – pupils, largesse, and adultery, or something like that.

My youth spent studying botany and biology shrouded in decades of shredded adulthood.

A black-and-blue butterfly bakes in the sunlight.

Why do people want to find meaning in fulfilling prophecies of their predecessors?

Should a child’s unprotected ears be exposed to the unmuffled sounds of a lawnmower?

What value do you place in the future of your child’s life?

Do you judge your child’s future by referencing your childhood of the past?

Cicadas play bumper cars with the sunroom windows.

Their “singing” matches the rhythmic humming of my tinnitus.

I, like my ancestors and living relatives, am going deaf.

When space and time are bent, what is up?

Cicadas never stay in one stage long enough to need hearing aids.

They don’t need e-dating websites, temporary nests we call houses/flats/huts/tents, shopping malls or sports arenas.

Some days, I think our species has outlived its usefulness.

Some days, I’m thoroughly entertained by what my species calls progress.

“They want meaning or a purpose given by my royal edict?” she asked. “Let them eat cake! Unless citizens are true royalty, their only purpose is to serve me and my whims. No matter how ridiculous they look, my hats will find a ribald buyer with too much money. When reproduction is no longer their only goal, the people will fall for any ruse that’ll make me richer!”

When silence is no longer an option, what is up? Satire, of course.

To the enlightened childless hermit, it is the Only True Way.

The rest is trickery and tomfoolery disguising your simple need to perpetuate the species, an image I dimly see while going blind in thought as well as deaf.

Today, I serve myself, the only action I truly understand in perpetuating the false image of self.

The Invisible Hermit is just one more set of states of energy, after all.

Do flying cicadas eat before they sing, mate and die?