Poetry

Worm

Ron Wilkins

Enveloped tightly
in food
mingled with indigestible sand.
Eat, the only way to move,
randomly, enticed by a crack here
a succulent morsel there,
infinitely flexible,
deflected by a stone,
a fork, a spade,
menacing vibrations
from some other living thing,
no backbone for a fight
in the black back lanes
of the earth.

No advertising space
no subterranean billboards
no missiles on bitumen
no beauty no ugliness no vision
no ethics, for what do morals mean
for a living thing,
meandering at digestion pace
alone, in the damp darkness,
trailed by
a labyrinth of excrement.

Few pleasures,
the massaging slip of moist clay,
a tasty nematode,
the frisson of meeting by chance
a fellow creature,
a slow glide along the parting
between flesh and bone of a buried thing,
recently deceased.

Ron Wilkins