The Worm

you’ve never been anything but proper

you’ve never been anything but another
thumbing through days like pregnant robins
tapping the flooded yard in search of nest stock
you’ve never been anything but proper

you can see it by how your eye-contact dead-letters
at first look down a conversation’s path
through days like a wall of rain the mailman
totters into on his way to fill you with bills

there’s always someone around who bricks you
up behind the partition of your wish to vanish
into a wall of other kids breaking against the familiar
you’re never anything to write home about

you’re never going to get the worm that way
unless you lay down in the dark and let it get you