Maternal Worm Instinct

Slippy, muddy, grey-green ground, I
tied a knot around the squirm-hole;
they are not to flap away,
their bodies soft like rusty clay.
(Worm mama!)
Fortune favors squirmy tricksters;
some of us have lost our Lesters,
and our babies, and our eggies,
all my babies, all my eggies.
All but one: Julian!
All but one!

Other squirmers write and wriggle,
in the dusty red crepuscule
after rain, but I don't join them—
dewy dust and grain, anoint them!
(Worm mama!)
Set my snares when the light-disk hides,
and Julian will curl like tide.
Flappers, I am waiting for you!
Villians, I am waiting for you!
I won't lose Julian!
I won't lose!

Plucking fur from forty peaches,
shells in pits from black-sand beaches,
keep flappers from my wriggling baby.
Squirming twice around the squirm-hole:
once for smells of monarch wings,
once for oils from rattle stings.

Three slinks to the pepper farm,
jalapeños under worm arms,
keep my squirmy safe from harm.
Slinking down the silk-squirm hill,
visits to the stickiest web,
rot-head from the millipede,
we'll drink the flappers while they bleed!
Feather puddles quench our thirst, and
coiny rubbles fill our fists, and
in the moon haze under marsh brush
we both shut our seeing-globes,
dreaming already, thinking of
CrysTal Bugz!