Must be caught in the dark, coming on to the azaleas. 
Must be pulled like a long
tube of snotty life, and placed
in plastic cups for tomorrow’s fishing trip.
Must be alive in your hand, writhing
to get back there. Must know what is happening.

Something that seems made of earth itself, but alive like us 
— but can’t be, wouldn’t be
thought of in the same sentence, purely a wriggling verb 
not subject, dangling modifier
to what is left unsaid. Something that will kiss us, ten 
twenty, fifty years from now, with blind, curious, 
penis-colored noses. Will nest in the sack of our former skin 
and delicately, “with no special hurry,”
disassemble our remembered features
until we can hear the fish we have eaten tomorrow 
and the lettuce we tore and chewed tonight
cry out to us from their changing elements
about the world inside the world
inside our pounding wrists.
It hurts to know. It hurts
not to know. Blessed be
the bright hook that delivers us 
from the river to the river.