Epiphany: Cicada

Madness, to pull against the warm, the constant earth
pressed close, pebbles and clay stroking your sides.
I was not done following the good down-growing Tree,
the mother sap, tasting her slow pulse, seasons of want
and fullness in their turns since time began. Unnatural,
against all faith, the leading—Up! An empty medium,
vaster than rabbit warrens, air. But it can shove you
hard as a mole snout. And light, a million shards
of mica punishing the eye till it stares red, beyond
belief, at great mythical beasts, impaling beaks,
at fabled green and blue, at distances made visible
without a crawl to measure. Yet I was swept away
among the crowd. I tunneled to nothing, I streamed
downside-up upon the yellowwood toward a heavy
hanging angel moon. Giddy, I gripped the bark,
but the Light tears you open anyhow. It cuts you
from yourself, pulls out of you wings, strokes them,
grants them gold. You harden and you have to fly,
wingbeats desperate, soft and disbelieving. And now
I feel it in my abdomen, a trill closes and opens me
and I become a voice, a prophecy, crying renewal
in the egg. Madness. But here I am, shaking the sky.