Brood V

Ovipositing

Skewered, then, at seventeen

year intervals, young maples

of the sweetest kind, swarmed

by locusts with red eyes

and lance-like ovipositors,

awakened from long sleep

to raise the chorus of their destiny

and fly just well enough

to pierce the expectations

of the field's return to woods

with their procreation.

Just the sugars wounded

stand with broken limbs

but will survive with scarring.

I've seen it three times now,

and in between, and in between,

still growing with the scars.

Seventeen! Seventeen! And then,

to never know the like of it again.