Earthworms Deserve More Poems!

A friend recently asked me for a copy of this poem I wrote back in 1999, while at a writer's colony in Taos, New Mexico.

I'm glad she did, for I'd forgotten about it and was glad to be reunited with the strong pleasure I feel when I remember to take the time to commune with the worms. Earthworms are one of the many unsung heroes of the natural world. For gardeners, they're good friends, but all of us who eat are directly enriched by the work they do.

And so I hope you'll enjoy my poem, "Reward."

REWARD
You must first be willing to kneel before the meadow.
Align your ear to its uneven surface and you will hear
the wheezing earthworms below, rubbery locksmiths
tunneling through their monotonous dimension. You
will hear the mild sucking of the earth entering into them,
the rasping friction of soil undulating uneasily through
them, and its loose translation into unstrung
baby bracelets of aerated loam. Look around you,
for you are kneeling amidst a sea of worm-castings,
amidst their labor and its souvenirs.
Then smell the worked-over soil their bodies revise.
And in that scent, find the echo of the sound,
its manifestation: the world passed through
the earthworm’s body
a key in its keyhole,
music through its bell.

Recent Things

Pumpkin.

Glam caterpillar on fennel.
Honeybee on zinnia.


Bumblebee on sunflower.

A neighbor's strange enterprise.

Rat-hunting target practice?

Bumblebee & borage.

Harvest.
Grandpa Ott morning glory.

The Pesto Factory.

Sencha and Wren conducting a Field Study.

Daddy Longlegs & old Mason jar.

A really big shoe (and a really long worm).

Aster. A most September-iferous flower.

Recent Things

Tiny bee on a shallot blossom.

Bumblebee on knapweed.

Ghost in the woods.

Frog in puddle after heavy rain.

Bumblebee on burdock blossom.

Moth on lily.

A view.

A fabulous worm.

Pumpkin overrunning a lazy gardener's watering can.

Bumblebee on bee balm, a native mint.

Worms

Before I had bees, I had worms. I got them about a year ago and boy, do they assuage the guilt that comes with being an American consumer. Having them devour our banana peels, rotted cukes, and overripe whatevers has significantly reduced the weight and volume of our weekly bag of city-trash. I used their castings in the lettuce bed this spring and no question about it, the bed's productivity quadrupled, with our first great harvest after four relatively pathetic years.

Interestingly, the honeybees seemed VERY interested in the worm castings, too. The bees landed on the castings I'd spread on newspaper before transfer to the garden and sucked up whatever good stuff was there to suck—Minerals? Salts? Wormy mojo? I guess I'll never know.

In any case, it was great to see this homage to wormdom in the Times today. Check out the article and then go out there and get yourself some worms. It's a great stepping-stone to becoming a beek and a fun, low-tech way to give Mother Earth a hand.