The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,

The worms play pinochle on your snout.

They eat your eyes, they eat your nose,

They eat the jelly between your toes.

A big green worm with rolling eyes,

Crawls in your stomach
and out your eyes.

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Ah, the worms! The Chinese call them little foxes that burrow (I Ching). I call them negative, parasitic thoughts. Ones that we've picked up along the way as we grew up and adopted beliefs and attitudes from those adults whom in our childhood innocence we considered authorities.

But even though these wormy beliefs and attitudes no longer serve us, very often we don't realize that they are still there, embedded in our brains and other parts of our nervous systems. The longer we allow them to remain, the more damage they do to us in unseen ways. And, eventually, these negative thoughts do exactly what the poem says that worms do! And then we get cancer and other diseases and wonder why. Dis-ease starts in our minds and hearts. If we fail to find ease - balance - then we suffer the consequences.

So let's work to replace any sneaky little thought/feeling of hatred with one of love; any resentment with gratefulness; and so on.

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This skull is part of a much larger sculpture by J. Seward Johnson that depicts the 3 Fates. A cauldron into which the deceased are tossed stands behind the 3 tall figures. And in this cauldron lies this skull, among other types of bones and other "ughnesses." You'll find this sculpture at the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ.

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