The Worm and the Light

a poem by Roger Rueda

I am the soil.
The mute bearer of roots and rot,
the slow archive of what falls,
what settles, what dissolves.
I know the weight of the world—
its pressing stillness,
its quiet erosion—
as though it has folded itself
into me, and I, in turn,
have agreed to hold it.

The worm moves through me,
blind and ceaseless,
its body a thread stitching the earth,
turning death into the promise of green.
It knows nothing of the light above,
yet its labor feeds the trees,
those steeples of sky
whose leaves shiver in wind.
It does not ask for recognition;
it only moves,
it only transforms.

Above, light falls fractured through the canopy,
a golden scatter on bark and stone.
It dapples, it burns,
its impermanence a kind of grace.
The trees reach for it,
their branches trembling
like hands mid-prayer.
But none of them see
the worm tunneling below,
the small, essential engine
that keeps the living alive.

The worm understands what the light does not:
that beauty is rooted in decay,
that all things are borrowed.
It moves without witness,
its purpose quiet but absolute.
Its work reshapes the earth,
makes space for the new to grow.
I feel it, feel everything—
the leaf curling into its final softness,
the roots pulling what they need from me,
the slow pulse of a world
built on impermanence.

And the light?
It will move on,
its brilliance brief,
its shadows fleeting.
But I remain.
I cradle the worm’s endless work,
the hunger of trees,
the weight of the fallen.
I know what it means to hold both
what rises and what returns.

Life is this:
the quiet shift between what ends
and what begins.
The worm burrowing, the leaf falling,
the light breaking itself into pieces.
It’s not permanence that matters,
but the transformation,
the way decay folds into bloom.

The worm’s path,
the light’s scattering,
the leaf’s descent—
all of it is the same prayer,
the same becoming.
It is enough.