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As spring approaches, a huge dump of snow pummels the Midwest. I look out my window, here in Appleton, Wisconsin, and shrug in awe. I’m still warm and safe. Do I deserve to be?
What is my relationship to this world I’m a part of? What do I contribute to it? Is humanity an invasive species – step on the gas, man! – or are we part of a larger purpose? I don’t know. I just live the life that was give to me, with all its technological advantages. But sometimes I claw my way beyond what I know, occasionally with the help of poetry. Welcome, William Blake! His 1794 poem, “The Tyger,” got stuck in my mind back when I was in college, and a few years ago, when I still lived in Chicago – still had a backyard, still did gardening – Blake’s “tyger” met a smaller critter. This poem I wrote is titled: “Worm.”
I pray
by digging my hands
into black compost
and lo I find the
heart of William Blake,
the heart of
the tiger and the heart of
the worm.
I pray, I pray
oh rich mother,
oh the fierce
smell of life.
Earthworms ooze
across my knuckles
terrified of the light
and wriggle back toward
the moist and humbling
depths. So I pray
to the city and the world
I know
and find only the tiger.
And the tiger’s roar is
what I hear tyger tyger
burning bright
up the alleys of the night.
Do we dare
yes we dare
we hit the gas
and cast our poison.
I pray
deep again into the soil.
I pray to know how
earthworms make
our mother fertile
how they cast out
not the devil but
nitrogen phosphorous potassium
and nourish what
the tiger devours.
I pray no
I
grope
into the deep unknown
yearning for the love
that equals being.
And I fear for who I am
that I am more
the poisonous exhaust of
the gasoline-powered engine
than I am the humility of
humus or
the loving wriggle
of life in the
dark soil.
