“Have you reckon’d
– Walt Whitman
the earth much?”
I used to lay in the grass
waiting for bugs
to traverse my limbs
to feel their tiny rapid tread
on my skin
lift my head and
count the stripes on their backs
the dots on their underbellies
catch their gaze
for a moment—
perhaps it was to feel,
to venture I belonged
in their world.
Here in these grey halls
the urge finds me again
not so I can wait for tiny
legs to cross my arms
but so I can feel.
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.
No one lies
with their face to the earth
unless—
unless to know what it is
to be one with it