Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No. 5 The Black Prince

THE BLACK PRINCE

Where I lived when I was young black cicadas, known as Black Princes, were rare. Later I lived in a place where they were the commonest cicada. This poem plays, I guess, with commonness and rarity, with familiarity and strangeness (often found together if you look hard). Just a note - to quote Wikipedia on the subject "commonly overlooked, cicadas have three small eyes, or ocelli, located on the top of the head between the two large eyes... "

                                          THE BLACK PRINCE

"Black Prince, the Green Grocer and the Double Drummer are the common names for three species of Australian cicada.”

- www.kidcyber.com.au

When I was a young hunter in greengrocer trees,

this dark cicada, this black prince was prized as though

it were a creeping rarity, a flying jewel.

For long and buried years it sucked the sap of roots;

at last it climbed from earth, feet hooking to the trunk,

and broke from thin, brown armour into the drying sun

and slowly hardened wrinkled and transparent wings.

                   Reborn.

                  Five-eyed.