Ants Poem by Roger elkin

fascinated with their fifties racing-car ways:
blunt-nosed Le-Mans-look-alike roadsters
with nifty black-liquorice fuselage, always
zipping down tracks, then stopping dead
on the spot, circling to rearing wheelies
and tantivying their unflagging laps
(there seemed no holding them) :

or jitterbugging in barn-dances, with
do-si-dos, sideways and in, squaring the set;

then running obstacle courses (many
the twigs, grass, leaves I teasingly let slip) .
But always such purposeful work;
their activity much more attractive
than his halting walk:
getting there, whatever the cost.

I fed them landslides of sugar smuggled from
pantries in crannies of handkerchiefs; dropped
the white blobs – monumental in their world –
smack, in mid-path; and marvelled
how they passed this massive booty down
the file, handing on their sugary baton
till it reached their heave of active hill.

Dad found their marauding disordering;
had other plans. Would show to them his mettle.
So, reached for his steaming kettle...

How, then, they raced. And danced.
Danced.
I winced.