I remember the worms leaping
like ballet dancers out of the grass,
their tunnels rain-eating the air.
I watch them bent in two
twisting like sprung paperclips,
protoplasmic refugees of the soil.
They land on this concrete world
with their soft bodies
exposed, jolted and disoriented,
with no landmarks to navigate by.
A slow crawl across an alien hardness
silvery threads and thin ribbons,
sun-drying into desiccated dreams,
bleaching into cement gray.
Not even food for passing birds;
they vanish blown away
as bits of universal dust.
