Cicada Haiku

Nate Johnson
2 min readJun 8, 2021
Brood X cicada on a leaf

Cicada Haiku #1
Cicadas in trees
sing to us their song of love.
Do we not love them?

Cicada Haiku #2
Birds gorging themselves
upon periodical
locusts all day long.

Cicada Haiku #3
Dog eats cicadas
and vomits in the kitchen.
No dog! Bad doggie!

Cicada Haiku #4
Bodies everywhere,
dead and dying and stinking.
Good fertilizer.

Cicada Haiku #5
The deafening din.
Bugs making love all day long.
All you need is love.

Cicada Haiku #6
Some find it so gross
that bugs feed birds, fish, mammals,
humans and the earth.

Cicada Haiku #7
Sucking on tree roots,
they live underground for years,
but now emerging.

Cicada Haiku #8
They can barely fly.
They’re so heavy and clumsy.
They’re easy targets.

Cicada Haiku #9
It’s quiet at night
and so loud during the day.
Do bugs really sleep?

Cicada Haiku #10
Their species is old.
Older even than our own.
Who is invading?

Cicada Haiku #11
An entire tree
swarming with them all over.
The air is alive.

Cicada Haiku #12
While we walk the earth
they live underground for years
then fly above it.

Cicada Haiku #13
Children love insects.
Then they grow up and something
changes inside them.

Cicada Haiku #14
Some hate cicadas
but love the pollinators.
They’re not that diff’rent.

Cicada Haiku #15
Bugs and bugs and bugs
and bugs and bugs and more bugs.
God! Bugs everywhere!

Cicada Haiku #16
The rain shuts them up.
And the cold and the night too.
But nothing else will.

Cicada Haiku #17
This is our planet.
But there’s more of them than us.
Who’s planet is it?

Cicada Haiku #18
Make me your vessel”
we ask but hate cicadas.
Are we hypocrites?

Cicada Haiku #19
Who’s invading who?
Is it our world or their world?
Can’t we just share it?

Cicada Haiku #20
The stuff of nightmares.
Horror films use their image.
They’re really harmless.

Cicada Haiku #21
It’s been seventeen
years and fifteen days since you
took your bugs away.

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Nate Johnson

Information security analyst and consultant. Incident response specialist. Jazz musician. Fly angler. Dad. All around decent fellow.