Army Ants
By Simon Fleischer

I once saw a documentary about Army Ants
massing in South America, making their way
up the continent, eating everything in their path.

Years later, the ants have not yet arrived.
They never consumed the grassy field
in front of my childhood home

above which I would swing and spin
risking life and limb on an old tire
hanging from a branch,

and they have not yet consumed
the square of grass behind the house
in which my three children are growing up,

a small plot of two-treed land, fenced in
for bubble blowing and bocce ball
and shards of memory so sharp

they cut the tips of my fingers
when greedy I write them down.
Squares of grass, stanzaic, survive

the assault even of armies of ants
making their way slowly up the continent,
onward, massive and hungry, inevitable.