Imagining Endings with Wriggling

"At Thomas Merton's Grave" by Spencer Reece in The Road to Emmaus begins....

We can never be with loss too long.

And now an ending...

It is disagreeable, to tend your garden, on your knees,
With the sensation of tending millions of graves.

Douglas Dunn concluding "A European Dream" in The Year's Afternoon.

I like how the one brings us into a meditative space of lingering while the other promptly introduces an ick-factor. Although nothing in the words explicitly points to the dead (insect?) life found in rich humus and fertile soil I have seen many sowbugs and centipedes crawl so that any graves mentioned in a garden context are strangely animated.

And so for day 364
13.12.2007