Poetry Friday

Roundup is at A Year of Reading.

On returning from a six-week absence to my garden, I was greeted with the wild jungles of Borneo (my husband being completely useless anywhere past the back steps). So I have spent many a happy hour amongst the weeds - most of them taller and more stubborn than I -hacking away. I am fascinated by all the little creatures that live in my yard and will quite happily waste half an hour or so just watching one doing its thing. I try not to kill them unless they are eating something to death.

I don't think that I have ever consciously read any Roethke. Something about the name made me feel I wouldn't understand him. However, this poem is alive and squirming. Every word is a picture. I am a Roethke fan from now on.

Elvers are young transparent eels in post larval stage -FYI

The Minimal
by Theodore Roethke

I study the lives on a leaf: the little
Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions,
Beetles in caves, newts, stone-deaf fishes,
Lice tethered to long limp subterranean weeds,
Squirmers in bogs,
And bacterial creepers
Wriggling through wounds
Like elvers in ponds,
Their wan mouths kissing the warm sutures,
Cleaning and caressing,
Creeping and healing.