Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Rose at Imagine the Possibilities. Thank you, Rose, for hosting here https://imaginethepossibilities.blog
On a road trip Delaware this summer, I bought this book. It’s a poetry anthology with useful insights on each poem by poet Pádraig Ó Tuama.
In Ó Tuama’s anthology, I discovered a poem by Gail O’Connell that expresses the gratitude I hope everyone might feel for the humble Earthworm. Some might find this subject creepy and the life of an earthworm not worth poetry. But that isn’t true, in my opinion.
When I was about ten, I used to go out in our yard after a summer rain with my brother and catch earthworms that were lounging on the grass. We sold them to a sports store across the street, never fully appreciating their genius.
WORM BY GAIL McCONNELL Burrowing in your allotted patch you move through the dark, muscles contract one by one in every part, lengthening and shortening the slick segmented tube of you, furrows in your wake. Devising passages for water, air, you plot the gaps that keep the structure from collapse. READ MORE HERE: https://onbeing.org/poetry/worm/
This poem made me wonder why we can be more like earthworms. We might think we are more advanced, but when it comes to the future, are we?
EARTHWORM ENVY
(After the poem WORM, by Gail McConnell)
How wise they are
to burrow and recycle,
leaving their patch of earth
a better place.
Brilliant,
worthy of emulation,
even if they
are (unlike us?)
not much to look at.
© Janice Scully 2023
The helpful but homely earthworm