Ants

Two wandering across the porcelain

Siberia, one alone on the window sill,

four across the ceiling's senseless field

of pale yellow, one negotiating folds

in a towel: tiny, bronze-colored, antennae

'strongly elbowed,' crawling over Antony

and Cleopatra, face down, unsurprised,

one dead in the mountainous bar of soap.

Sub-family Formicinae (a single

segment behind the thorax), the sickle

moons of their abdomens, one trapped in bubbles

(I soak in the tub); with no clear purpose

they come in by the baseboard, do not bite,

crush bloodless beneath a finger. Peterson's

calls them 'social creatures,' yet what grim

society: identical pilgrims,

seed-like, brittle, pausing on the path

only three seconds to touch another's

face, some hoisting the papery carcasses

of their dead in their jaws, which open and close

like the clasp of a necklace. 'Mating occurs

in flight'— what better way? Weightless, reckless

rapture: the winged queen and her mate, quantum

passion spiraling near the kumquat,

and then the queen sheds her wings, plants

the pearl-like larvae in their cribs of sand:

more anvil-headed, creeping attentions

to follow cracks in the tile, the lip of the tub,

and one starting across the mirror now, doubled.