The March moon is the worm moon
Because it rises as
The soil thaws
And the worms send up their casts
Enticing the robins.
It should be time for spring, for planting,
But on the plains the rivers weep,
Filling the furrows; they would wash the seeds away.
On the other side of the seasons
The floods turn acres into oceans.
Lapping backwards, they leave their harvest:
Bodies, lined up on the roadside.
The aid workers sweat to bury them,
But sometimes the thirsty water washes the graves away.
A poet wants to be a gardener,
To place a bulb deep in the earth of the mind
That will sprout and bloom again and again,
Making a world of spring.
But I am knees down in the dirt,
Nails breaking, soil staining my life lines,
Digging and digging to plant each elegy.
The waters are rushing in.
Image vastateparksstaff / CC BY 2.0
(Un)Nature Poems 