The creatures
who watch us
with amused love
are dying.

Sometimes, we
have nothing
to do with it.

Cicada,
the little Christ
hummed the
drone note
high in sooty towers.

Now its body
lies broken
on a step.
Lifted,
the wings
detach,
thorax drops
like an airy plumb.

We live,
it seems,
on a one-sided
world--

one tired

as a body
on the city bus
at night,
falling into itself,

head bent
in the wrong
direction.