Susan Scheid

 Enter and Exit Singing
             I.
 Back and forth
 the golden orb swings.
 The earth spins.
 The golden orb does not count,
 does not age.  Time is nothing to it.
  
             II.
 What is time?
 Stasis
  
             III.
 The sleeping princess awakens
 from a hundred years’ dream
 where little has changed.
 We don’t know the side effects
 of enchantment.
 Her dreams, her prince, her world
 tunnels its way out of the roots.
  
             IV.
 The golden orb continues to pass
 the shadow is cast.
 Discs go flat
 to catch the sun’s light.
  
             V.
 What is time?
 Metamorphosis
 Awakening
  
             VI.
 The periodical cicada, that orange-eyed
 sleeping beauty of the insect world,
 emerges from under the long shadow
 of time’s pendulum.
 One night, 17 years.
 They awaken singing.
 No digging, no hives, no anything.
  
             VII.
 How long is a night?
 a decade
 a century
 a pandemic
  
             VIII.
 We will awaken and emerge one day.
 Grope our way out,
 the husk of this pandemic
 a shadow on the floor.
  
             IX.
  
 The earth spins
 the pendulum makes another pass.
  
             X.
  
 Let us walk with the princess atop the wall of night.
 Let us look up now and then, look in the trees and sing.
 Let us remember the cicada’s hot pursuit of connection 
 before time runs out again. 
  
 Let us gaze at our reflections in that golden orb,
 make the most of brilliant days between darkness,
 always enter and exit singing. 
  
 ©Susan Scheid 2021 

Writer’s statement: 

Over the last year, I have been thinking about the passage of time, especially how I’ve experienced it during the pandemic.  Time has felt both expansive and compressed, sort of like a slinky toy, and yet, my ability to track time and know the length between days and weeks and months has been skewed.  The two poems I selected—“Sleeping Beauty” and “Pendulum”—each convey the passage of time in different ways.  In the Sleeping Beauty tale, the castle awakens after 100 years, yet their lives remain unchanged.  The pendulum is a steady and regular marking of time.  The emergence of the 17-year cicada this year which added another layer to my thoughts of time and seemed like the perfect complement to the poems.  In addition to my poems, several Washington Post articles informed my original concept; however, the article “Live like a cicada: Enter and exit singing” from the Washington Post gave me the title and some of the language for this poem. 

Bio: 

SUSAN SCHEID has been writing poetry since the days when her father read her poems at bedtime.  Her book, After Enchantment (available on Amazon), was inspired by fairy tale characters she loved in her youth. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Susan serves on the Board of Directors for Split This Rock. She lives in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC with her family and their cats, who more often than not find themselves as subjects of her work.

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