Oh little worm I cry for you, a brave blue collar hero in the machinery of life. You can’t know that tiny, iridescent spheres of deadly plastic are concealed in the soil you eat so conscientiously and you may not know that your little life keeps the lungs of our planet-body healthy and fit. Oh little worm my tears imitate the tiny plastic bits and also the glistening blue planet orb. Falling into you my body's fluid, this useless regret is my only medicine. I will die and feed you, knowing that I am part plastic too. I am poison, even in death.
Written for Ingrid’s Earthweal Prompt – A Poetry that Does Not Compromise
Out of the Cave 
Excellent poem. Worms and bees, very underestimated.
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This certainly does not pull any punches. Really gets to the core of how we are poisoning every nook and cranny of this earth.
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Thanks, Ingrid. We have to take responsibility.
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We do indeed!
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sensitive and tender; a cri de coeur —
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Thank you, John. 🙂
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Wow! This week is bringing some fantastic poems. Lovely to contemplate the little worm, so integral to the loosening of earth – yet even belowground impacted by humans and our horrible plastic.
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Thanks, Sherry!! 🙂
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God, I don’t know what it is this week, but the poems I’ve been reading on WP are bringing tears in my eyes lately. This is one of them, and it speaks to me especially on an existential thought of life; but perhaps also slightly solipsistic in how we are selfish and do not think much of what is considered outside from ourselves. I love that thought since I think we are inherently selfish and most try to break away from it, but it’s cyclic. We are our own demise, what is worse is that who we are causing harm to may not even know it. I loved the fragility and honesty in these lines:
“I will die and feed
you, knowing that
I am part plastic too.
I am poison,
even in death.”
It’s a harsh truth, but it’s a cycle of life too. Beautifully and hauntingly written, your work is so moving and chilling in how you express and describe an idea, especially the idea of our own death in the making and the climate change battle. My hat is off to you.
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Thanks, Lucy!! What a full and thoughtful response. I agree we are selfish. And fragile. But we need to take responsibility for what we’re doing.
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Imagine – a species sentient enough to master its world as well as a little of its own nature; and then wise up so slowly and too late to the knowledge that mastery is a tool of infinite destruction. I love the intimacy here with the soil-maker, even if it acknowledges that it can only be a damaged relation. Can there be a cycle of life with transits so infected, damaged, spoiled? The worst aberrancy would be for life to retrofit itself to the human so that we can center the spoil singing, mine all mine, mine all mine. – Brendan
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Wow! I do love how absolutely embedded our relationships are in this poem. The delicate concern and destruction all rolled in the perfect human form. A really good write. Thank you
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The plastic is eating us. Very effective to find the macro in the micro. It’s everywhere. (K)
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I could see the worm carefully picking it’s way through the soul, avoiding the plastic. But the plastic particles became more and more, until the poor worm was picking through the plastic to find what little soil remains, like the ball pit at chucky cheese
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🤣 that’s quite an image. The sad thing is, I don’t think creatures necessarily sift out the plastic. They eat it and it clogs up their guts and kills them.
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Taking such a small detail and making it so moving, and stand for so much. Great writing.
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Thank you, Sarah! 🙂
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so sensitive and awesomely powerful, well done .. deserves publishing!
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Thanks. 🙂
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welcome!
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