I know whose toes
Peek out below:
Beneath their nose,
Under lips,
Lower than their waist and hips;
Past their knees and their shins-
Toes they’ll use to count to ten.
Better yet,
With our twins,
They’ll count to twenty to begin,
Then move to forty without linger,
Counting on each other’s fingers.
Toes and fingers, fingers and toes,
Twenty wigglers they’ve come to know,
With twenty fingers to catch and throw.
For now we’ll rhyme toes off to market,
And play Pat-a-Cake
With Ophelia and Brigid.

I’m gonna fall from the tips of your fingers
beads of sweat off your forehead
oak logs into ashes
shaken leaves in autumn

I’ll pour into flower beds
and nestle with red wigglers
Tell me about the slow stretch of your shoulders
and the scars on your knees
Lets pound them into perfect soil
roll around in cover crop
I’ll probably need you to pick flowers out of my hair
when I fall asleep in the dirt on summer nights
I might need your raspberry lips to kiss grass stains
off my overalls
and sun-kissed shoulders
but in the morning I’ll praise
the way you lay still clutching my waist
like holding tight to the tops of trees

tickle my roots
so i giggle and
jiggle my lymph.
dandelions thrive in crust
but i'm a prairie nymph.
my feet need
fluffy stuff like peat.
my leafs need
complete fairy rings
to hum the drumbeat
as the prairie sings.

how fortunate to meet
mycelium, come eat
where i sleep:
in Creatures' compost
replete with giggling
wigglers underneath
the brown and sticky
sticks betwixt
the Sun-fed sedges
on the edges
of the Forest.