Mitchell Nobis

by Mitchell Nobis

Earthworms the color of oil spills
carry my prayers through tunnels—
some wild
will survive.

My prayers ride wild through a darkness
that has no word, has no light by
which to
contrast itself,

like the dark between galaxies, no definition
without what it’s not. Sinew & mass, sleep.
The deep
earthworm world

somewhere far under the pounding thud
we churn and wrench and build up here.
A wild without
and within.

My prayers slide through soil, fill on minerals & microbes,
alive. Some turn mulch but some of my prayers
huddle into masses,
turn their

tomb into a chrysalis—carry the formless dreams
of what we never became.

The others
I pray

May my prayers tunnel deep & deeper;
may my prayers seep into boulders
buried & left
behind by

glaciers that gouged this land when it
was crumpled together and carved.
My prayers
wait until

glaciers come back for them again.
My prayers wait
for glaciers
after Time.

My prayers wait
to someday slip upward
through the tunnels,
to someday see light again,
to someday whisper
Thank you. I’m sorry. It was beautiful. Thank you.

Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has been nominated for things by Whale Road Review, Nurture Literary, and Exposition Review. His collection Beginning to Sense is forthcoming from ELJ Editions (2025). He facilitates the Teachers as Poets group for the National Writing Project, hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series, and co-founded the NAWP reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis (various platforms) or mitchnobis.com.

by Mitchell Nobis

“Who was your first love?” they
asked as if love meant more
than the unknown then, but
my first love was not knowing,
not having to know, having
people who did the knowing for
you while you dug around,
explored the woods & the world
with mud on your feet and
fertile soil under fingernails.
You watched birds fly–
barn swallows fast like blinking,
like wind & what the eye cannot see
but is there, moving, swift–
while you were supposed to
be shooting them. You’d use
the sight to focus on a sparrow
pulling loose its dead feathers,
its fluff drifting, caught on a breeze.
You didn’t know where it would go,
caught in the trap of beginning to sense.
To yearn for it, to know it, what leaves.

Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has appeared in Whale Road Review, The Night Heron Barks, HAD, and others. He facilitates Teachers as Poets for the National Writing Project and hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis and mitchnobis.com or falling apart on a basketball court.