My world just brightened as the sun pried its way through fog and smoke.  We’re still warned to stay inside, and yet, there is a lift and lilt to the air this moment, where I am.

This morning,  I’m counseled by this poem shared today on Writer’s Almanac.  

I delight in knowing that earthworms have taste buds “all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies”, and then, I come to the last line, ah, yes.  

Feeding the Worms

by Danusha Laméris

Ever since I found out that earthworms have taste buds

all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,

I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine

the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples

permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,

avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.

I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,

almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure

so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,

forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

“Feeding the Worms” from Bonfire Opera by Danusha Laméris, © 2020.

Reading books is my guiding light these days, balanced with dips into the news.  This piece on NPR is sobering on how once again we’ve been duped.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled

To counteract that, I suggest reading Gerald Durrell’s wonderful books The Corfu Trilogy: My Family and Other Animals. There’s some wonderful home-schooling advice, though most of it is conducted outdoors which is still iffy here these days.

In reading Niall Williams book, This Is Happiness, I set intention to become more of a “self-appointed Judge of Existence”. From the book:

“On the bicycles Christy and I came up where Patsy Phelan in his three-piece suit sat on a small carpet on his front wall.  Patsy enjoyed the privilege of stillness, most days did absolutely nothing but breathe and look and hear and smell the world turning. A self-appointed Judge of Existence, at noon he went in for his dinner, then came out again for the second sitting.”

I set intention to enjoy the privilege of stillness, reception, and sitting with the play of Light.