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Posts Tagged ‘worm’

Lumbricus terrestris

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 13, 2022| 10 Comments »



On a day when the world is weighty,
   dark and dense with need,
       I want to be the earthworm
         that gives itself over to tunneling,
   its every movement an act
     of bringing spaciousness.
       And when minutes feel crushed by urgency,
   I want to meet the world wormlike,
     which is to say grounded,
       consistent, even slow.
   No matter how desperate the situation,
     the worm does not tunnel faster
       nor burrow more.
   It knows it can take decades
     to build fine soil.
       To whatever is compacted,
   the worm offers its good worm work,
     quietly bringing porosity
       to what is trodden,compressed.
   So often, in my rush to repair,
     I end up exhausted.
Let my gift to the world be
  my constancy, a devotion to openness,
     my willingness to be with what is.
       Let my gift to myself be patience
   as I tend what is dense and dark.

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How the Healing Comes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 3, 2022| 16 Comments »




Healing comes less like a falcon
with mighty wings,
and more like an earthworm
that slowly, slowly moves
beneath it all, tightening up,
then stretching out, tightening up
and stretching out, a simple
two-part rhythm. Some days,
that is all the body can do.
Contract. Expand. Contract. Expand.
In the meantime, through this
artless act, what is dense
becomes porous.
In the meantime, what is stuck
and clotted gets moved around.
What is dead passes through,
is processed by the grit inside.
There are tunnels now in the soil of me,
thin channels of recovery—
a blessed loosening,
a gradual renewal. It’s unhurried, but
I feel the air, the rain,
the life coming in.

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Progress

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 25, 2020| 4 Comments »

Perhaps I am more like the earthworm

  than I thought—

    one part of me anchored in place

      while the rest of me moves forward.

    Every time I go, I also stay.

  Every time I reach ahead, part of me holds on.

Over and over, I pull myself along.

  What looks like progress is slow.

    No path except the one I make

      by letting the world move through me.

    In order to proceed, I make of myself a wave.

  In order to proceed, I must let go.

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Quick Conversation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

the worm in the rose hip

emerged from the place

I’d just bit, both of us

squirming as if to say

I want to live a little while longer

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And I Can’t Find My Way Back In

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 6, 2014| 2 Comments »

All these years
I thought I might be
the one who had opened
the can. Such surprise
to find I am one
of the worms.

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