Fellowship with the Worms
Fellowship with the Worms
Lindsey Priest
“Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you seeking?”
Supposing him to be
a gardener, she said...
Each Sunday, Sister Smylie,
vaseline slick, Pentacostal mother,
kept an appointment to be found slain
in the Spirit, hat flung somewhere between
all the bowing and rising, legs loosed from
her skirt. I missed all her meaning, staring
at her brows and thighs, sweaty and mixing
with the dirt from the well-worn bottoms
of other people’s shoes. Now, like her,
with my dirty black fingernails, curls host
to unnoticed crawling things, I fall
at the sight of the Cherry in bloom
down the center aisle of this young garden
we’ve been waiting all winter – perhaps all
our lives – to create together.
We’ve begun to know ourselves as the plants
do, at the mercy of seasons. It won't always be
winter. And even then, under the dirt
life is all a squirm.
I’m meeting so many lovely worms.
I speak with each one, beg
pardon for these complicated limbs:
Please don’t go. We’ll turn this clay
to loam, black and moist, food
for your belly and my soul.
See? See. I’m one of you, covered
in earth, inching my way through seas
of unsounded soil, churning our winter’s
worth of egg shells and banana peels
into food for the hungry.
Above, the aphrodisiac buzz
of bees, whose honey-drunk bumbling
dances each flower awake.
While the rest of the living are still
thawing, Anemone, known for their brevity,
the soul of their beauty, have already unearthed
themselves face first from the nest of roots
and soil the Worms and I enrich.
Perfectly floppy, puppy eared petals,
veined and butter soft, take to the sky
at the slightest wind. All their easy
beauty blown away. Why do we name
them for what they’ve lost
instead of all they have left?
I say, Your petals belong to
the Wind, but you belong with me.
We are women carrying bulbous
crowns near to bursting with next season’s
generation, collared with leaves, alive
and living, warmed in the spring chill
by wooly legs, lithe with Dandelion
persistence; our legs have always been
our strength, and no one calls us bad.
Lying here in the dirt, all I can think
of is Sister Smylie,
and Magdalene, who once
mistook the risen Lord for a gardener,
took Him for what
He has always been.
Lindsey Priest
Poet & Mother
Lindsey Priest is a wife and mother. She studied Writing and Biblical Literature at a small university nearly a decade ago. She writes in the early morning while the rest of the house is asleep. She spends her free time reading with her young sons or gardening with her husband. This will be her first publication.
Photography by محمد سجة