Our notion of insect life cycles
is upside-down.
We watch the adult stage
and mourn.
Such a short life.
But nymphs live for
years. Then
one brief moment for sex
and egg laying.
!["Noisy Cicada, Male," by LadyDragonflyCC - >;< on flicker (8/30/2011) [Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)]](https://emptypath.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Cicada_1024px-150x150.jpg)
Then years of life.
Perpetual motion
whose sole purpose is
Motion.
Image: “Noisy Cicada, Male,” by LadyDragonflyCC – >;< on flicker (8/30/2011) [Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)].
!["The Teff Harvest, Northern Ethiopia," by A. Davey from Where I Live Now: Pacific Northwest [Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons]](https://emptypath.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Teff_Harvest_Northern_Ethiopia_1024px-150x150.jpg)
4 comments On Perpetual motion
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Thanks, Linda.
It’s a curious cycle. …Nice poem.
Thanks, Lyn. For some reason this came to me in contemplation this morning. Especially the part about our viewing the brief “adult” stage of some insects as their “real” lives, and all the life that comes before that as somehow not counting as life. That seemed upside-down to me today.
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