Rising Ant

I woke up in the bottom of a tunnel.
I looked around, dazed, carefully brandishing
my weak antennas. There were other three pieced
black bodies crawling over one another.

After a time I could tell
that tunnels were only dug straight up and down,
or just forward and back
or at a rough angle.
I scratched the dirt off the right wall
and found it surprisingly smooth.
I applied a little spit-shine,
recoiled, my feeble antennas flailing
and fell backwards off the sudden ledge
directly onto a pile of writhing legs
and thoraxes glinting lightly,
muttering it couldn't be true.

I climbed out, clawed to the main shaft,
scissored my six legs like fury,
and breathlessly heaving myself
over the lip of the hole
I knew that I was on display
in a glass box,
in a room of glass boxes
in a planetarium exhibit
where the ceiling was lined with stars
and colors I didn't know,
with nebulas and galaxies I would never touch,
and only a faint mirage of a window
to outside in the distance,
shimmering green trees and grass forever beyond.

To Live

It was safest to sit
in the wet cement
when I was fleeing the ants
that had it out with me.
I watched them sink
trying to cross the grey sea,
and they fell into the holes
my shoes had gouged;
but then the sea began hardening,
and the ants climbed over
their brothers like boulders
and I couldn't get up.
But instead of eating me,
they swarmed, crawled me...
only when the queen got hungry
would I be devoured.