Luke Whitington: Two Poems

Driving to Cicadas

The cicadas’ song rises

As I drive through a curve around a corner

As I change gears, throttling down the years—

The remembered chant lifts, flows

Along like a rhythmic hymn

A chorus of a million small voices

Congregating up there—a continuous song

The humming dirge merges

With my weaving, zigzagging journey—

The sky is mine they seem to sing.

Do they seek to claim time

Make it stop, possessed

by passion and song

do they seek to keep time, like a lover, enchanted?

Car, cicadas and memory

Becoming one shining whirring thing

As we hurl ahead, the car

flanks gleaming light and reflected trunks of forest—

One same song I hear clearly now, on another summer day

As I turn the wheel again, the same curve, the same corner

Blurring—Pulling me inwards, a melodious drift

flows across a surfing chorus—the thrumming of my years—

for moments again my life stops, held by the cicadas’ song.

Luke Whitington

Sunlight

Sunlight could recount

A story or two