Heavy rain consumes New England—earthworms
surface on my driveway. No oxygen in their tunnels.
It’s 1908 in Sicily, tectonic plates shift—the earth quakes.
Grandma Gracia is stranded in her second-floor apartment.
As a boy, I hated rain because it pushed the worms
out of their homes and into traffic’s path.
She held her two young children in a Jenga tower.
Opened the window and tossed a mattress out.
My mother and I would find sticks and lift
the worms and place them on the lawn.
Gracia grabbed the infants, her rosary beads—
and jumped into shouts of rubble.
We named the dead worms—one after
my cousin who drowned in a river accident.
The Red Cross shepherded them to steerage
in a ship bound for America.
The rain recedes. Survivors burrow back into the soil
in my front yard. The earth throbs. Pulses.
–
Joe Barca is a poet from New England. He has a partner, two children, and a Wheaten Terrier named Brady. He is a fast talker and a slow runner. He grew up with the Atlantic Ocean at both ends of his street. His father loved boats, so he spent a lot of time on the sea.