THE DAY THE ANTS GOT IN
You were packing or he was packing,
throwing in willy-nilly the bits of a life
departed. You were barefoot, a sleeveless
sheath, doors and windows flung open
in the heat. They poured over the sill, the walls,
the sink, moving as one black tide faster than
you could sponge them away, returning
a hundredfold. So long ago, the leaving
that changed night to day—now every day
an arrival. And when the ants get in
for the ripe fruit or sticky counter, you let
the flood come, some penance or karma
that sets aright the world’s sour and sweet,
until they’re sated and leave on their own.
*
Poet, playwright, essayist, and editor, Linda Parsons is the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. She is published in such journals as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, and many others. Her sixth collection is Valediction: Poems and Prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee.
From The Archives: Published on This Day
- Betrayal by Valerie Bacharach (2023)
- Envy by Jennifer Abod (2022)
….So long ago, the leaving
that changed night to day—now every day
an arrival.
I, too, am generally one who likes to let all creatures be, but after throwing out pounds of cat food and having them crawling on my face in the night, I have become more ruthless regarding ants. One day I hope to make amends. Love the poem.