Monday, May 22, 2006

#29: May 22, 2006

It's summer, and the ants have come again.
Red ones molehill the yard; the black ones too,
That breach our house like Harry's happy few
At Harfleur, finding secret pathways in.

They burrow under joints in the windows
And squeeze through seals that stop the winter wind,
Then march in single file, though to what end
I wonder whether any one ant knows.

Somehow they find the food, though--bowls of milk,
The bloodstain spill of our kid's sugared drink;
A smorgasbord of leavings in the sink
Draws thousands of their single-minded ilk.

We crush and poison, drown and trap and kill;
But evolution rules under the hill.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Very accurately observed. Have you read my poem, The Anthill? Those critters fascinate me too.

I would recommend changing "That" to "They" at the beginning of line three, ending the previous two lines with a period as a complete sentence. That way, both red and black ants are like Harry's men. Syntactically right now it says only the red ants are.

Really can't find anything to criticize in this piece. Well, I think "under the hill" is weaker than you want, though I enjoy the clever allusion to ordinary speech. I guess my problem is I think of ants as living in the hill, not under it. I would still keep hill as the rhyme, though. Really nice work.