#2230 -- little black lines of them

 

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