sprung

The Woman Who Loved Worms

(from a Japanese legend)

Disdaining butterflies

as frivolous,

she puttered with caterpillars,

and wore a coarse kimono,

crinkled and loose at the neck.

Refused to tweeze her brows

to crescents,

and scowled beneath dark bands

of caterpillar fur.

Even the stationery

on which she scrawled

unkempt calligraphy,

started the jade-inlaid

indolent ladies,

whom she despised

like the butterflies

wafting kimono sleeves

through senseless poems

about moonsets and peonies;

popular rot of the times.

No, she loved worms,

blackening the moon of her nails

with mud and slugs,

root gnawing grubs

and the wing case of beetles.

And crouched in the garden,

tugging at her unpinned hair,

weevils queing across her bare

and unbound feet.

Swift as wasps, the years.

Midge, tick and maggot words

crowded her haikus

and lines on her skin turned her old,

thin as a spinster cricket.

Noon in the snow pavilion,

gulping heated sake

she recalled Lord Unamuro,

preposterous toad

squatting by the teatray,

proposing with conditions

a suitable marriage.

Ha! She stoned imaginary butterflies,

and pinching dirt,

crawled to death's cocoon

dragging a moth to inspect

in the long afternoon.

Colette Inez