In all those sandpit hours of strawberry
blonde girls with tongues like spades and cherry
bomb children’s games, I held the worms
closest—twisting blindly alive in my palms,
my elbows upon a gnarled red rock the size
of a desk or an altar. In the arithmetic of a child’s dig,
a worm never turns into two or three worms
but moves for a few precious seconds.
Before we had a family cat, there were gypsy moth
caterpillars eating fingertips from August leaves
until pesticide planes canvassed the banks
of the Magothy. Something in me now always starts
with the sky, as civilization begins with fertile rivers.
My mother’s voice in the bedside dark, multiplying,
branching to watershed, while a cat kills a grass snake
in the basement. Here’s the name of a flying bird
in parabolic flight. Here’s the name of a tree when it
is eaten to slivers. Now find your sleep.
