Tuesday, December 01, 2009

a queen ant lands

Hello oracle, how are you?
a queen ant lands on top of my papers making a sound like a raindrop.
waving scattershot with dumb feelers for an indeterminate item lost,

hermit crab
trolling along the lines, miraculously
with her one set of flimsy see-through wings
hastening blindly to the edge,
she does not jump or fall,
she turns, feeling her way along the top of the stack of papers
looking for where to rest and lay eggs?
or lost, away from help and alone?
non-fiction persuasive.
she has crawled willingly onto my un-offered arm.
up the bare skin to the shoulder, then falling beside my hand onto
the spool, it seems she has forgotten her wings.
she stumbles determinedly up the metal lever then down,
over the serrated knob
towards the moving inside parts of the typewriter

Okay, must save queen.
it becomes a struggle- back to the sheets now for a picture.
she is more frantically agile now from my body heat.
she won't and can't sit still or smile.
hastening again towards the edge,
she drops under the page, lost and not found.
gone, finally fallen, alone.
really, I can't find her
and am afraid to move for fear that I might crush her.