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Beneath the cicada’s hum, I sat, my shadow folded into the quivering and fluttering shade. The leaves leaned close, Or fell like angels wings plucked and I whispered to them: “Are you God? Speak, if you are.” A cloud drifted, lazy, impartial, and I begged it too, my hands open, pleading for some sign in its slow curvature, it language was in silence, The bees hovered, the birds argued in their sharp musical graces, and I asked the air, my lungs filled and arms spread : I cried “Are you God? Or do you only carry God breath?” I turned to my book, the pen trembling in my hand, listening, listening, almost knowing as if the words were not mine, but this silence, it's language that held not a palletable word It was this moment speaking through me. Each line, each mark, a flutter of wings, a ripple across the infinite. I looked to the horizon, the glorious unknown, and with a sudden clarity, thought came “God must be in all things! In the motion of the leaves, the insistence of the cicada, the buzzing patience of bees. And if this is not mine , My pen is not mine; it moves because the silence moves, and the silence is everything I have not asked, everything I have not dared to see.” The sky did not answer, but moved I felt a presence in its stillness of each passing shape, and in that quiet, I wrote: words that were not words, thoughts that were not mine, a hymn to the infinite hidden in the trembling, mad, beautiful simplicity that truth was painted in the world around me.
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Jan 22
Jan 22, 2026 at 6:50 AM UTC
Beneath the Cicada
Beneath the cicada’s hum, I sat, my shadow folded into the quivering and fluttering shade. The leaves leaned close, Or fell like angels wings plucked and I whispered to them: “Are you God? Speak, if you are.” A cloud drifted, lazy, impartial, and I begged it too, my hands open, pleading for some sign in its slow curvature, it language was in silence, The bees hovered, the birds argued in their sharp musical graces, and I asked the air, my lungs filled and arms spread : I cried “Are you God? Or do you only carry God breath?” I turned to my book, the pen trembling in my hand, listening, listening, almost knowing as if the words were not mine, but this silence, it's language that held not a palletable word It was this moment speaking through me. Each line, each mark, a flutter of wings, a ripple across the infinite. I looked to the horizon, the glorious unknown, and with a sudden clarity, thought came “God must be in all things! In the motion of the leaves, the insistence of the cicada, the buzzing patience of bees. And if this is not mine , My pen is not mine; it moves because the silence moves, and the silence is everything I have not asked, everything I have not dared to see.” The sky did not answer, but moved I felt a presence in its stillness of each passing shape, and in that quiet, I wrote: words that were not words, thoughts that were not mine, a hymn to the infinite hidden in the trembling, mad, beautiful simplicity that truth was painted in the world around me.
22 January 2026 Beneath the Cicada Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
MalcolmG
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Jan 22
Jan 22, 2026 at 6:50 AM UTC
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