Reckoning

“Have you reckon’d
the earth much?”

– Walt Whitman

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