John Martone: Magicicada spp.

Even if little boys in play
shd use a piece of grass or wood or a brush
or perhaps a fingernail
to draw an image of the Buddha
such persons as these
bit by bit will pile up merit
and will become fully endowed with a mind of great compassion;
they all have attained the Buddha way.
The buddha’s relics will circulate widely
 --The Lotus Sutra

HD 10180, a yellow dwarf star like our own Sun, had five planets detected by the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) programme at the European Southern Observatory. … Two further planets were discovered in the system towards the end of 2010, making it the most-populated planetary system to date.
 --BBC 0ct 1, 2008

it’s another
planet now
cicadas

*

cicada shell’s my amulet cerebrum

 *

must be
same gene

tells you

get
out of

yrself
cicada

*

 yr shell — my shell —
cicada
kayak

*

cicada shell
kayak too this
bottomless lake

*

little
boat

on that
sea

lucky
drowning!

*

every bit of you comes out cicada

*

lonely mobs
13-year
cicadas

*

in my undershirt
examining
cicada molts

*

13 year
cicada — what gets
reborn?

*

cicada molt my skin color

*

cicadas
termites

how much longer
being human 

*

cicada — millions
never knowing
one another

*

cicada millions
an ocean
full of whales

*

bumbling down
this road one more
cicada

*

cicadas die
legs drawn up
so human

*

mulberries of course there’s a stain

*

cicadas & mulberries equal in number

*

ci
cada
wings

maple
keys—

& still
this

air
remains

*

cicadas
falling

out of
sky

all those
people

*

imago
instar
nymph
which are you?

*

sky’s
one
big

eye
glass
lens

*

o cicada
you’ve no
eyelids

*

knowing
what youre
about —
catastrophe

*

rusting — ruins
surrounding
the pea plants

*

                        peas really climbing now — youre out of sticks        

*

bare wood shack
cabbages
taking shape

*

get out
of yr head
sketching cabbages

*

old clothespins
all those lives
outdoors

*

electrical box --
there's yr opening
wrens

*

thunder
he pulls up
his socks

*

tar paper roof
trellises
filling up

*

all
youwant

to be
one

dragon
fly
wing

*

little kitchen
you get all
the light

*

elbows
on a wood table
solo

*
                                                                 wood table old friend
a bread-
&-
butter

solo
life

*

bare kitchen counters
& the radio
off

*

raining
it’s a glass
bowl

*

ten-year-
old
bamboo

knows
the trick’s

to root
in
water
*
                                           another raccoon you scrub a pear

*
dish
towels

fold
ed

*

under-sink
cabinet
won’t stay shut

*

you wash
yr spoon

& brush
yr teeth

*

come spring
the mice forsake
this little kitchen

*

in
the right
light
you
dis
appear

--june 2011

[This is the third set of poems by John Martone to appear in Poems and Poetics. On publishing the first set, “geometry,” & again for the second set, "presence of all colors," I wrote: “[Martone] remains throughout our greatest living miniaturist -- his art a scaled-down work of nearly epic dimensions,” an appraisal I think that continues to be the case today.  (For a fuller accounting see the "geometry" posting, August 18, 2010.)]