Seventeen years in the cold cold ground, their existential angst prolonged
White, pigmentless naked nymphal bodies, hideous piercing mouthparts
Siphoning sap from tree roots, toiling in dark dirt
For what? Their emergence, finally, unsynchronized with predators?
Just to fuck? And to meet the terrible death of fungal pathogens?
Their abdomen slowly replaced with spores while alive
Cicada periodicity has evolved separately eight times
Every brood cycle is thirteen or seventeen years - both numbers prime
Evolution has used primality cleverly
Mathematicians have “discovered” lots of things about prime numbers
But what does it mean to discover something about numbers, about math?
What does it mean for evolution to use numbers?
Science studies things that exist in space and time apart from us
In what sense do numbers exist without us? Alone in space and time?
Math - a theory of the logical end of counting
Here I will offer number theory for cicada consolation
These blind naked nymphs, these dirtbound wretches are drone automata
Without counting, no numbers, no existential angst