Worm Life
by Odin Roark

As Grand Historian,
I’m an “everywhere” sort of thing,
noticing you daily, Mr. Worm.

I’ve chronicled your earth-fed families
growing and prospering over the centuries,
some giving back to the Nature that has fed your ancestry, us,
and just about everything…your on-a-hook-sacrificing
for our planet notwithstanding.

You’re an efficient and proud species,
even if a bit on the non-descript side,
but always dependable as you procreate,
populate, propagate Nature’s needs.

As always, being all business,
you are early to rise on this August 6, 1945,
checking out cake crumbs of yesterday’s birthday party
beneath the cherry trees where pennants and paper lanterns
still sway askew in the sunrise breeze.

Now you peer out from beneath
your leaf and consider your daily schedule,
skipping a nook here, a bush there,
always staying clear of the family koi pond,
being the hearty eaters they are.

You’ll go about completing your methodical checklist,
staying wary of mother-birds anxious to provide breakfast
for their nest of newborns.

You’ll stretch your senses toward the sky,
take in the rich fragrance of August’s lavender,
and by chance catch a glimpse at the contrails
very high toward heaven, where a fortress-plane
makes its way south, passing island after island, until…

You’ll know about its purpose tomorrow morning,
when your world of earth and flowers begin worrying,
begin to shrink beneath the toxic mushroom cloud
drifting and looking to settle where it may.

Me?

I’m just an ethereal curator of archives,
wondering why nuclear history need repeat the beginning.