2230
7.38
7.ii.26
little
black lines of them
to add to the ant poem nest
consider!
how thinking to outwit
to cross a page I must
imagine
it’s headlong and edge on
they’ve come
as if from
who knows where
they are on the forage
are forming up the wagons
I believe they egg each
other
steady at the jar
an unrelent
each an Atlas, bearing up
its world
to hell and back they go
duty bound
unique as we each are
a heart unseen, a soul some
say
some worry they’ll ‘come
back’ as one
I note the pause and sniff,
project
it’s task to carry on
between them
not our air –
their ether
they are the telling of rain
they are inventing writing
again again again
the market watches how they form
up a graph
I think I can
bright business suits
who will guess from past
performance?
slow steady
ants gather at the pool of
death
I have prepared for them
each on guard
askant of eye
pull up a pew – group therapy!
they are a hundred million
years old, more
no wonder they go so wearily
and they will survive us
there are twenty quadrillion
of them
they weigh twelve megatonnes
altogether
(much less than we do)
I do give them points for
persistence
but I call this place here ‘inside’
I hope they will take death
home
