Editor’s Note: Writer Ann Sigford joyfully embraces Mother Nature including one of her smallest beings, ants, in this delightful poem she spontaneously wrote upon catching sight of them.
A smudge on the sidewalk catches my eye
early, early Solstice morning.
Town criers meet deep underground
check the date, double check
this is it, the earliest sunbeams.
Town criers circle, huddle
tap antennae once, twice thrice together
and in unison proclaim
“OUT, UP and OUT!
The sunbeams await!”
Sluggish at first, the scouts climb
up so-familiar tunnels up and through
the cracks in the sidewalk.
Wave their antennae
tasting, smelling this new day,
the earliest sunbeams dazzling.
Towering above I watch the ants
loosen their joints and teeter out.
All those little commuters
heading to work
even on such a day.
Streaming out into a new season,
every ant with a long west shadow.
Every ant a living Stonehenge
marking the Summer Solstice.
Copyright © 2024 by Ann Sigford
Great imagination. Love it.