Cicada Season.

This is not the seventeen-year cycle that makes the news, which we tend not to get, anyway, each or every seventeen years. This is not even a cicada in every tree, or a chicken in every garage, but in the trash maple out back we have some excellent examples of the species, full-throated versions of what mid-July ought to sound like in the mid-south. Loud at dusk and pre-storm, loud at other times that make less sense. Loud. The cicada's courting ritual is not a subtle one, is not notes in the locker, notes under the windshield wiper, notes in the saxophone case. What I would have given to know it could work this way.

Off in the morning via un-air-conditioned Chevy pickup to 23901 to help my brother and his family move into the nine acres they've bought themselves outside of their new .edu. What he wants for help: furniture moving, bookcase painting, clothesline installation. These are things of which I'm vaguely capable. The forecast: possible storms tomorrow, sun much of the rest of the weekend. At least one familial meltdown. My parents will be there, too. Here's hoping for semi-complicated individually completable most-of-the-day tasks. Here's hoping for something that passes for quiet through the middle of the night. Here's hoping for a three-month-old child who takes to his new digs right away, no problem. Here's hoping.