poem

 Stomach

Sometimes it seems the world is churning

Around us like we were trapped in a giant stomach,

Like something large had swallowed us,

So ravenously hungry it forgot to chew  

And now we’re all being slowly digested

Tossed and frothed in a peptic darkness

Sorrows and joys, hair and bone

Dissolving in the hydrochloric acid 

Of a burning inevitability.  

But all to good purposes—

Corroding us into a bilious muck

That improbably nourishes.

8/15/22