I lean over the edge of my hammock, swaying softly in the breeze. A cicada is slowly crawling upon the ground. If I correctly recall from a sleepy field trip day in a dusty museum that cicada's in our region live for seventeen years underground before crawling up to the surface to lay eggs and die. And I think that's really beautiful.

This prehistoric bug is a hermit nearly two meters below our feet. He has heard me playing with my brother and sister for ages. He has been burrowing lattice-like tunnels underneath the earth for longer than I have been alive. And now, I get to watch his first emergence in the real world. Pandora with it's infinite wisdom and sense of irony plays "Young Kids" by Peter, Bjorn, and John for this individual's audacious escapade.

This cicada drags himself nearly two feet through the freshly cut grass to the crepe myrtle my hammock hangs from. As his little arms (or are they technically legs?) grasp the tree, he stops. Dead as a doornail.

The whistling hook of "Young Kids" circles back around and I almost cry. Billions of years of evolution; seventeen years of digging around in the dirt; all for a few minutes of muggy Memphis September. I'd like to think that those few minutes of sunshine were the best in his life.

I can't wait to leave this humid city and go into the real world as an adult. I can't wait for the whirlwind of newness that will come with the allegorical sunlight. Goodbye little cicada and thank you.