What says poem more than an earthworm?
In the darkness it holds such dominion,
As it breaks every fiber of being down
Without a sound, turns soil black for growing.
Yet in the light, away from the dirt,
It is too lithe, too uncertain,
Sending itself out like a shoot to oblivion,
In a blind probe for more ambrosial waste.
What we don’t need and can’t use collects
By the side of the stove. We scrape it away
By moonlight before we go to sleep
In the backyard heap, where there’s always room
To churn into earth what we cannot consume,
The shells we’ve broken, the strained grounds
And overripe fruits, the life gave that we turned
Away, that soon won't seem to have existed at all.
