“Have you reckon’d
the earth much?” – Walt Whitman
I used to lay in the grass
waiting for bugs
to traverse my body
my limbs
to feel their tiny rapid tread
on my skin
count the stripes on their backs
the dots on their underbellies
to catch their gaze
for a moment—
perhaps it was to feel
to venture I belonged
in their world
here in these grey
death-stained halls
the urge finds me again
not so I can wait for tiny
legs to cross my arms
but so I can feel
what I do—
to press my face
into the earth until
my skin begins to sink
beneath the folds of grass
to push my fingers like claws
into the tangled growth until
they reach the end of things
so I can hold
what I will become
what they, on my watch
have become
no one lies
with their face to the earth
unless—
unless to know what it is
to be one with the earth