As ants go
There’s something too deceitful in it, too
like Fido playing fetch, a rotor tail
of happiness. And back the stick comes through
a swamp or thornbush. Formicaries fail
from poison offered gift-like. Terrorism
that did not muss my hands. I set in motion
something biological, a chrism
to anoint their dead. I have this notion
then ignore it, so conveniently,
and kill them all. Are we the masters here
who build new tortures, new machinery
of chaos for another species? We’re
on sufferance. Sufferance. Who is left to try
defend us if another bids we die?
