Earthworm poetry relieved my childhood fears. As to burial:
The worms crawl in,The worms crawl out,The worms play pinochleOn your snout.
A solitary sort of kid, a digger, close to the ground, I had often been down on the level of worms.
As to being different, which I was:
Nobody likes me,
Everybody hates me,
Guess I’ll go eat worms.
I wasn’t thatdifferent. Maybe not much more different, fundamentally, than anybody else.
As I grew older and more confidently sophisticated, I