I met a worm, a tiny brown creepy-crawly
Undiscernible eyes hypnotic rings enticing me
To follow it down below, where soils are darker
Pitch black tunnels dug by writhing bodies sparking
Claustrophobic sensation of the underground.
An entrancing bond compels me to obey
I creep behind it as if we were the same,
Through blinding obscurity making our way
Accidentally intruding in an anthill silently
Roving thought contorted galleries into
Fungus gardens where subjects labour for a queen,
And out creeping further into a mole’s lair
The excited worm accelerates in fright to escape
An enemy delighted in feeding on its friends,
Heading down deeper into solid abysses
A hole drops us in a secret ocean, amid rocks
Aquifers in a ball of air, another world
My sight now accustomed to blackness gapes
At glittering minerals stars in disguise concealing
A universe within, populated by millimetric white
Translucent Niphargus who never saw light,
The worm does not know how to swim and climbs
Over me for rescue as I go deeper still and fall
Into vertical tunnels made of diamonds
Cuts and bruises fascination overwhelms me
I do not feel the pain only the awe of what’s afore me
Rocks of all colours shapes and textures I plunge
Into liquid ones, the outer core where iron flows
We do not burn the worm learns how to follow me
For a change, five thousand kilometres deep
A thousand five hundred and seventy-one more
To go, to explore, to find Verne’s fantasy and mine
A tangible pulsating heart made of stone
And though the temperature rises to equal that of the sun
Without even noticing the worm and I here down below
Find immortality melting to become one with the All.
[Featured artwork: Earth structure illustration]