Having Forgotten My Notebook

Having Forgotten My Notebook

April's chilly sun lies
like a bright stone
beneath a thin current
of clouds as the robins
descend from their roosts
and start their fitful survey work.
Yet here's an earthworm,
hauling the pale rucksack
of itself across a bare patch
in the lawn. Each pink ring
quivers as it picks its way,
deliberately as metaphor, toward
some dark tuft of meaning
it might explore. It is finger,
nerve, eye, tongue-pure impulse
and sensation. If I turn away
the briefest moment, this thought
may disappear forever