Periodical cicada syllabic verse

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Seventeen years in the cold cold ground, their existential angst prolonged

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White, pigmentless naked nymphal bodies, hideous piercing mouthparts

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Siphoning sap from tree roots, toiling in dark dirt

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For what? Their emergence, finally, unsynchronized with predators?

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Just to fuck? And to meet the terrible death of fungal pathogens?

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Their abdomen slowly replaced with spores while alive

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Cicada periodicity has evolved separately eight times

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Every brood cycle is thirteen or seventeen years - both numbers prime

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Evolution has used primality cleverly

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Mathematicians have “discovered” lots of things about prime numbers

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But what does it mean to discover something about numbers, about math?

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What does it mean for evolution to use numbers?

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Science studies things that exist in space and time apart from us

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In what sense do numbers exist without us? Alone in space and time?

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Math - a theory of the logical end of counting

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Here I will offer number theory for cicada consolation

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These blind naked nymphs, these dirtbound wretches are drone automata

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Without counting, no numbers, no existential angst

FishBeer