Ant

 

[Ant]

 

wobbling ant afoot in sunlight

is our perception, toppling over pebbles

carting home lunch on its back

 

while closeup itsy’s procession

shows a nobly forward figure

of elegant ant manoeuvres

 

all day might be spent watching

the focussed, industrious ant

but attention must go on to other things

 

the Italian poet says his ant

nudges the dried leaf across pathways

hospitable to wayfarers

 

gauging, after consideration,

that solipsism is not ant’s forte

and never will be

 

while here at home the ant

makes circular micro-heaps

between the brickwork to the compost

 

scurrying the hard yards

between heatwave objectives

and the underground cool of ant

 

which it will do alone, or in queues,

forming opinions in our minds

ant does not wait to hear

 

out of sight out of mind

with an ant it seems, at first glance,

one day much like another

 

though another and then another

ant is ant’s day through summer

or so it seems in this heat

 

the Italian perceives ants

as an army at drills

but then he lived through two world wars

 

negotiating looks like squabbling

from this height:

ants like order, but this looks like chaos

 

the atlas in their heads

thousands of words never said

instead, the abstract dance of ants

 

scores circle a billabong of droplets

lying on a concrete pathway

the permanent thirst of ants

 

yet at the first scent of death

ants change their travel plans

shouldering the remains for burial

 

bitsy ants busy their trails

out and into their megacity

pretty labyrinths below nondescript earth

 

that will do them well for the winter

free of the birds

ants alive with memories of sunlight

 

scent is their language

touch that turns command to alert

in the seconds it takes ants to act

 

we might consider ants for hours

as we would a book of Times New Roman

black figures that up and scurry   

 

pages and pages of ant-size words

living concrete poetry

their objective water, not metaphor

 

Notes: the collage grid of ants was drawn with a black sharpie. “The Italian poet” is Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), whose work I am re-reading over the summer, in this respect especially the poem ‘Thrust and Parry II’, in ‘Satura: 1962-1970’, translated by William Arrowsmith (W. W. Norton, 1998).