Pandemic

by Jared Pearce

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Rain, and the worms breached

the concrete brink,

stretched themselves hard

to float above drowning.

 

Running blind on walks

and in the street, 

the slight traces of their feet

etched the sandy washout

 

of the gutters. That trace,

and their curlicue dead,

are the remains—they could

find no way home to dirt,

 

their flight too high and far.

Jaime carried worms

back to the soil, but when we

checked later, one nightcrawler,

 

half-dove in Earth, was still

and gone, like the world

sticking its skinny, purple-grey

tongue at us.