The antediluvian eye follows me around the base of this great oak.
–––
This is an ancient line and the ancestors of this grasshopper appeared long before the first dinosaurs roamed this earth.
They have provided one of the auditory backdrops to this Andalucian summer. The incessant and piercing stridulation of their love song seemed to intensify as both their passion and the heat rose.
This love affair is all to brief though, as not many of its kind can live for more than a month.
Soon, one by one they will fall silent as the cooler Autumn nights draw in. The forest will then lament the passing of this the weaver of summers lay.
While they remain though, they richly fulfil their promise within the ecology and I see why the Iroquois welcomed them as the bearer of profoundly joyful news if they ever met during the Spirit Walks.
I slowly back away from that knowing eye thanking her in the manner of the ancients for her glad tidings and orthopteran paean.
Photo: Migratory Locust at Los Tornos. Courtesy of the author.