Al Fresco

            My love, we have carved our names into a tree that is growing in the backyard. It is raining and we are sitting on the screened-in back porch. We are agreeing that it is too warm to be inside. This is the kind of warm rain that creates life, you say, and I see the worms from inside the cracks of the cement, how so many of them leap from the soil never to return, shocked and saddened by the force of weather. O, Mother Nature.

            We have carved our names into a tree that is growing in the backyard. It is raining. We are sitting on the porch. It is much too warm to be inside. The kind of rain that you only see in nice films about nice people in swampy weather trying to be nice people, trying to figure out their lives. The people in the films, they have no worms, you never see any worms in films, you say. Or maybe you said maggots. Maybe you were talking about something having nothing at all to do with rain. All I think of is the way worms are blind, how when they leap from the soil, they have no idea where they are going.

            We are agreeing, for once, on something, that it is too warm to be inside, too sticky and oppressive. We rock in rocking chairs, cool ourselves with pieces of paper we have crinkled back and forth and made into fans. We sit in silence, admiring our names on the tree. There are worms on the cement, worms that are pastel-colored, worms with pink underbellies. When the rain subsides, days later, there will be worm corpses everywhere, sticking to the bottom of sandals, of boots; they will all be perished, wasted away. But not now. Now they have leaped from the soil, from under the flower pistils and the tree’s bed. These worms are property of the rain now, they are sacrificial. O Mother Nature. It is raining, look at the rain.

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