by Terry Trowbridge
You can’t cut back on funding! You will regret this!
– Transportation Advisor, SimCity 2000
The red ants living under our walnut tree
barely know us, the four humans. The walnut tree knows us,
but must think about our lives around the trunk,
or the one person who built a balcony onto our barn,
three storeys up, inside the walnut canopy
YouTubing a tablet and beers at the eye-level of squirrels and birds.
Two more of us dig superficial gardens around the walnut roots.
One of us catalogues, or transplants, wildflowers and mushrooms.
If the red ants know of us, they must consider our roles
reorganizing their habitat in contrast with the constant tree,
the cyclical birdsongs, the seasonal manic digging-under, digging-upper,
dragging-yonder, of squirrels. The red ants must use our collective smells as a map
and the leaning vegetation of multispecies foot landings as a huge street grid.
June 1 st : the end of No Mow May.
Today I moved a rock and revealed their city.
Red ants were frenetically bustling, like all suddenly discovered ant cities,
surprised en masse and interrupted by one of us, creatures mostly in their sky.
Their choice of rock was reasonably heavy, jagged, and flat on the Earthside.
Military architects could aspire to produce so perfect a sedimentary dome.
During the beautiful motion of perfectly coordinated, unplanned kinesiology,
I pondered the difference between coordinating creative dance and rote drill,
lingered too long trying to count the nanny ants gingerly bundling lavae and eggs.
My simple swipe of a rock was a civic tragedy. Red oracles silently wailed.
Soldiers responded by gazing skyward and returning my stares.
Anthropocentrism asserted itself and I moved the rock away, forever.
Assessing the ordinariness the red ants restored to my chaos,
the walnut tree seemingly too busy wafting leaves above the barn,
the squirrels utterly disinterested, I made the decision to withhold a second disaster.
I will wait until the red ants are invisibly tunneled beneath the walnut shade
before I mow the lawn.
© Terry Trowbridge
Researcher Terry Trowbridge‘s poems are in Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Carousel, Lascaux Review, Kolkata Arts, Leere Mitte, untethered, Snakeskin Poetry, Progenitor, Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Pinhole, Big Windows, Muleskinner, Brittle Star, MathematicalIntelligencer, Journal of HumanisticMathematics, New Note, Hearth and Coffin, Synchronized Chaos, Indian Periodical, Delta Poetry Review, Literary Veganism and more. His lit crit is in BeZine, Erato, Amsterdam Review, Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, StudiesinSocialJustice, Rampike, and The/t3mz/Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant.
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