Recoiling link of worm appals
the fresh-dug hole. Each and every aortal
phut – its guts deliver yours.
It wasn’t like I had the bubonic plague;
of course, one can never be too sure.
Employing extra force unsheathes
Neat bits of dream:
Missing fingers, remain amiss
upon awakening … Your body in a suitcase
unfolds in my cradled arms…
Enrapture with the waves
On an otherwise calm lake.
And how the worm must dream
its guts, upon each clod: the black blood
a mistake,
a fraud each severed portion;
a scintilla, ratified by naked sinew.
What, may I ask, has faith to do
With mud but not with meat?
Movement, with the unmoved?
There is no mystery in the fall
Of shovel-blade. Rather, an alacrity
in cutting through the earth,
the great separation to cultivate.
Glenn McPherson is a Sydney based poet. His poems have been published in Meanjin, Cordite and Southerly.