Ernie Wormwood

Mea Culpa

The first night of the new war
we made love, whispering like criminals
who would be executed at dawn.

We slept as spoons.
During the night it rained.

At first light I went out to see the world,
to see how it would look wearing war.
I walked the wetness of my street
and found the earthworms,
their brown bodies covering the blacktop,
all dead, awaiting the burial of the sun.

 

Published in The Wartime Issue, Vol. 7:2, Spring 2006.

Ernie Wormwood (November 28, 1946 - April 6, 2012) was born in Washington, DC and education at George Washington University (where she earned a JD degree) and the University of Maryland (where she earned an MA in Public Policy). Wormwood worked for 25 years for the Montgomery County government and taught at several area colleges. Her poems appeared in the journals Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Antietam Review, Rhino Magazine, and Cafe Review, and the anthologies Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami, Poem, Revised, Poetic Voices Without Borders, and Primal Sanities: A Tribute to Walt Whitman.