Waiting, I noticed the midsummer sound of cicadas, their dry rasp foretelling summer’s finale and autumn’s approach, and soon after that, winter. Some find it a sad sound, herald of the season’s ending. I find it mellow comfort: an invitation to rest; to return to the earth, my source; to reground in what is more real than all the passing occupations and preoccupations of the superficial life that so often consumes me. Return, the cicadas say: settle down, rest, be embraced by the earth and its cycles, be at peace.