Kevin Walker
If you and I had to dig ourselves out of
a grave, we could do that. Not like those others.
We’d disrupt the earthworms in their blind pathways.
Dirt would learn who’s boss. We’d bother and flick it,
tickle it with virtuoso fingertips
as if we were coaxing stray bits of couscous
from a dead god’s beard or improvising rags
for piano four hands. If they threw us in
face down? That would be epic – we’d tunnel down
to get to up. In to come out. We were born
to move the earth. To penetrate to fresh air.
Kevin Walker’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and the Best American Poetry series. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Michigan, he has spent his career in the nonprofit sector focused on reducing poverty and expanding economic opportunity in under-resourced communities. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
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