Hamlet

Sowing Pangaea

It started with our boats. They carried thread
Across the breach. They carried thread
While their crews and captains wasted and weathered.
They carried thread to darn Pangaea whole again.

Earth worms, fat and succulent, gathered for a baptism
Performed by a father on his son, helped reinforce the stitches.
These night crawlers are reprobates. Secret soil defilers,
They planted our needles deep in the earth.

They planted the needles between roots and rocks.
They refused to let the earth lie fallow,
And so they furrowed ditches for loosestrife
plucked from Ophelia’s water grave.

They pushed purple loosestrife into foreign soil hoping that
When the New World birthed her own Ophelia she would have
A proper burial. When the New World birthed Ophelia she was wiser:
Rather than picking poppies she plucked worms, fat and succulent.

Rather than purloining poppies Ophelia attempted to rip
The seams we had sewn between this world and the old.
This time her body would lay eternal and whole
As bodies did before the ships carried thread.