Every day this week Abby has joyfully reminded me,
“It’s time to feed the maggots!” I unfasten
the elastic strap that keeps the raccoon out,
pop up the plastic lid, and there they are, chewing
away, little rice-size devourers, caressing the mush
of cake, banana skins, bones, bread, apple cores.
She loves the shiver of what’s going on down there,
the eating and birthing in the dark of what we’ve left
behind. I don’t like to empty the garbage, myself,
don’t much like to pull away the cover over the causes,
the suffering, the tombs, the pyramids, the forest roots.
What happens when it freezes, this far north?
Have they all turned to flies by then? Is life a rehearsal
for death? Then why this satisfied squirming? Why
will the bones go, too? Why was my dollar bleached
in the wash? Those love poems of the human animal
with all their angst and fear and irony and ennui
and dirty talk, they are so excited! And look! The raccoon
has dug down on either side and up from the bottom.