10.17.13

                                                  When Darwin
thought to test sonic responses of earthworms,
he requested that his children serenade
his soily jars of them: and, dutifully, an orchestra
of whistle, bassoon, and piano began
concatenating the night away in the billiards room,
its air alive with tremble and skreek,
low-blown moan and high-pitched tootle, so
racketing you'd think the row of dead wrens
and the barnacles might rise up and start capering.
The worms appeared deaf to the music; nor,
I'll bet, does this concert sound like a day
in your world—though it's of your world.

(from albert goldbarth's "jung/malena/darwin," tin house #57)