When it rains, they wriggle to the surface

Like soft nostalgia, like buried thoughts,

To vie for rationed breaths.

They squirm out of the hands of death,

And they sigh and twitch under gentle, spattering rain

Only to be squashed under a rushing bicycle

Or snapped up in a charming robin’s sharp beak.

 

I think a lot about earthworms.

Their attempts to survive are met only with disgust.

When they heave themselves onto the pavement,

They await death.

Death at the hands of an innocent, perhaps,

A child who knows only what they think she ought to know.

Death by a deliberate boot, or someone running late to a meeting

Or that awful robin.

That, or death at the hands of the Earth.

 

I wander parking lots and sidewalks under roiling skies

To toss them back into the grass.

I see this as common courtesy.

But the futility of it haunts me.

I know there will always be another storm, another sidewalk,

Another earthworm

And despite my efforts, they stiffen, speechless,

Fried on the asphalt.

 

 

©Kaylee Schuler