WRONG TURN
A worm makes a turn
for the worse
in the rain-soaked gloom
inching cautiously over the
black and glistening concrete--
driven from the spiky grass
by flushes of water--
Slung far from its roots.
Its blind mouth pokes
this way and that;
intimations of hunger
and hellish danger in its gut.
Fiery Helios leaps out to burn
away the cumulus canopy.
The side walk becomes a skillet,
the livid sky its lid.
The viscid vermis thrashes
on the heated element,
its belly dance of death
a dazzling fit of nerves.
A worm turned wrong,
the earth turned its back--
no reprieve for the naked.
O Worm,
no childish prattle or robin's chirp
mark your involuntary throes,
no barbed hook to pierce your heart—
a swarm of ants attends your drying.
November 1968
