Worm sex                   

by BETSY BOLTON

The only time I ever watched, voyeur, 
the act in progress, was on the playing field
where we ran the dogs in the morning: 
misty rain that day and muddy ground
and there they stretched, inverted U’s, clasping
each other by the clitellum, glued
to one another with a slime tube
swathing their conjoined, conjugal bodies.

I gaped at their unexpected length,
and the speed with which they sprang apart, 
diving into their burrows with the snap 
of a rubber or a rubber band 
breaking or loosed; coitus interruptus
for a species used to prolongatus:
known to spend three hours or more in that clinch
hermaphroditic, joint ejaculation

carried through slime to sperm receptacle.
Back home, I discovered that despite the courtship, 
that extended clasp, worm reproduction 
is lonely, solitary, a slime tube               
like a sweater pulled over the head
scooping up eggs, then sperm, enclosing all
in a lemon-shaped cocoon, with albumin
to feed the worms-to-be. On this field of queer sex,

I wanted to celebrate how each worm inhabits 
all positions of erotic exchange, 
but found myself distracted by worm housekeeping: 
that tidy morphing of bodily fluids
into a package made to keep the kids
fed and happy, self-sufficient, their parents
free to lose themselves, past their courtship
and its consummation, in consuming the earth.