Raising Worms

Raising worms can be tough because,
when they look at you, you can feel guilty.
They look at you with those little round faces
and those sad eyes and that does it.
They have a way about them--I think they know
what they are doing, encouraging guilt and sympathy
the way earthworms do.

It’s like, Are we the last ones left alive?
They want brothers, sisters, kin to bump and push
and slither with under the soil and in the silt-laced sand.
Their little eyes plead for camaraderie,
for a place in the sun.
Instead, they inch under the weight of clay,
beneath the oppressive silt-strewn peat
and moist moss with no one to tote their banner,
with no advocate to champion earthworm rights.
I see it in their faces, I hear it
in their plaintive pleas at night
when I’m relaxed on the sofa watching whatever
and they are, supposedly, bedded down for the evening
beyond their glass habitat, within the nutrient rich
earthen environment
applicable to wormy wants and needs.

And so I check on them
one last time
with guilt running like a river in my veins.
I smile and make like everything will be fine
and they of course give me that appeasing look
but I know what they’re really feeling
and so the guilt river runs even faster
and splashes cold along the inner banks
of shiver-sorrow
that I eventually take to bed
in tossing and turning.

This goes on day after day.
The weight of the world raising worms.
They have ways, innocent yet so effective.
Stress is diminishing--O I just can’t pretend!
They’re practiced in their art;
I wait on worms.

40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
August 17, 2014