My Sacred Ant Poem by Michael Shepherd

The milk bottles were resting amidst geraniums
on the doorstep this morning,
to be picked up with half-open eyes

but then, put down in the alien land
of steel sink’s draining board,
two ants caught in their morning explorations
who had inadvertently hitched a ride, jumped off;
and now, bade fair to steal my heart;

two chaps who lived to work,
they presented the soul of agitation –
backwards and forwards on the steel sink they scurried,
seeking orientation, seeking to continue their allotted work
in an alien land where the sun
had spun a cartwheel in the sky

how to return such swift and now so agile movers
to their colony which lurks around the wooden gatepost
as if around some benevolent totem,
giving itself to its devotees, to be eaten totally away?

I took a sheet of A4 paper, trapped the one
against the steel; the other refused to join its fellow;
both evidently suspicious of my kind.

I started back to the front door with my precious cargo
which was becoming more precious by the second;
but in its agitation, it dropped off, to find
some path to life’s purpose on the floor;

I with some indefinable sin
to expiate on behalf of mankind
which cares more for large things than for small