Birds and Worms

“Check”

I’m sitting on a bed of tender wood,
writing this poem, listening to the dropping rain,
knocks that strike the house, pleading to come inside,
and Mom’s squawk, upstairs with my boy Arturo,
(“Knights move diagonally, Queens as they please”)
chessing, while

I’m in bed, sheets that smell of worn out bodies,
writing this poem and spying through the window
the plants that old lady planted,
stains of paint over a hoary rug of wet grass,
(“Even the worms will drown” says Mom)
because here it rains, day and night, and so

I’m in soft wood, sheets of an old memory,
poems that will not end, a rain of 40 days,
not wanting to wake, a worm nestled
under rock, recalling that as a child that old lady
(“Let’s hope your sons are not like you,” she said)
struck me, between the soul and skin, while

my son, a blind wormlet, is upstairs
between the mud and a bird’s bill,
with that old lady, who taught me nothing,
with that old lady,
(“Now you got it!)
teaching him to play chess.

“Check Mate.”


Ernesto Raúl