A while ago,
energetic,
I practiced intensive container gardening
and raised compost worms –
red wigglers.

I read
that everything around us –
the granite, the plants,
and all the rest –
once passed through the digestive tract
of this ancient species.

At the hour of the wolf
they were busy,
happily munching rotting garbage
and writhing in their bin –
I could hear them! like softly crunching snow steps –
producing compost,
ecologically correct black gold
that made my garden a wonder.

Stiller,
today,
my thoughts crawl elsewhere –
back to Joseph’s sad last seminar,
when he told us
about Mendelssohn,
and Levinas,
and Heidegger:
That everyone dies one death, alone.

No one can compare.
So why all the chatter?

When I conducted
Mozart
and Bruckner
and Mahler
and Pagh-Paan,
didn’t I bring
through my fingertips
stars from the night
into the concert air?

Worms are memories.
On my zafu,
solo,
I am preparing.
Shall I keep crying?

When I’m in the ground
the tunes I sang
will pass through tummies
of perennial red wigglers –
just like everything else.

22 January 2016