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I Grow Into the Ground

As I were not here
untangling heads
cutting pods and withered blooms

the bees fly in and out swarming
over the bright yellow coreopsis.
Purple and green with lavender wings

and pouches at the waist.
I reach to snip a leaf
and it leaps out of the way.

At the roots I dig up worms
with each trowel of dirt.

The sun feels good on my back
the breeze on my bare arms.
On my knees

in the scent of earth and crushed grass
I grow into the ground.
My arms are branches swaying bending

casting a shadow. My breathing
as quiet as the earth’s.
The noon bells seem far far away.

A butterfly stops on a bloom.
Black and brown
with blue and orange near the forked tail.

I’m a peasant gawking at nobility
a waitress staring at celebrity.

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Rina Ferrarelli's The Bread We Ate, a collection of original poetry, was published in 2012 by Guernica. She has also published two other works of original poetry, Dreamsearch (malafemmina) and Home is Foreign Country (Eadmer), and two bilingual editions of translations, I Saw the Muses (Guernica), and Winter Fragments (Chelsea). She was awarded an NEA and the Italo Calvino Prize. Two of her poems, "The Young Immigrant Writes to a Friend Back Home" and "Mayflies" were Included in WRITTEN ON WATER, Writings about the Allegheny River (Mayapple Press, 2013).