I invited abundance into my life
as the guru on the app had suggested,
then sat back and waited. But in my
anticipation, I failed to notice its arrival 
as a cluster of white crocus wearing 
a crown of singing bees. I didn’t see
the budding olive trees full of golden
promise swaying in the August breeze.
Regal hoopoes skittered in the bushes, 
bee eaters wind-chimed the sky. Swallows 
nested in roof rafters, their young 
songs unheard, while I wondered when 
the riches would come my way. 
Then one bland morning, hanging laundry 
in the sun, I noticed a cicada’s gossamer 
exoskeleton still gripping the stalk of a dying 
weed, the insect itself now high in a tree
clanging its tiny cymbals together, having joined
the chorus of lusty heat. When I die, may I 
leave my own shell behind so easily, attached 
to nothing, at peace with everything
as I slip out to sing with the others.