ant critic.

The ants out front - as I retrieved
the huge blue plastic trash can
booming and echoing hollowly,
on wheels - had made grain by grain
the most beautiful anthill, I had to stop
a bit and watch it. I nearly leveled it,
smooshed to a level patch of surface
dirt by one bare foot, placed

by absent mind.

Thankfully nothing of the kind
occurred. It was lovely, how it turned
out - it was like a

funnel.

Not like a tornado, no - though those
are called "funnel clouds" as if that's
cute, like a funnel cake - especially

when most are so foul. No, this

was like
the important part
of the funnel. The top, which spreads
to gather good in and down, not the bottom
that tears ass through housing developments
sowing and reaping destruction in one moment

of impossibly focused wind-shear.

I wondered, wondering, looking
at its grainy arrangement. Which somehow
had far less the affect of precision than
the effect of perfection. I wondered what

its bottom got up to down there, with all
the good gathered streaming in and down.
Then I recalled I'd seen nature shows, ant
farms and such - so, probably that's about it.
Tiny tiny things to the eye! But given the right
lens you'd get huge, white pupae stupidly
propped up everywhere, serviced by man
-sized sticklike abominations - no, ants!

Oh, okay. They're just little guys, then.
And the queen, oh you know. Give her
her privacy.

Anyway.

Good job, kids!
Haven't seen a better one in years!
It spreads out like the mouth of a funnel,
instead of jutting up all toy volcano, trying
to impress the lawn, or something.

It strikes me my reasons for preferring
a rising swell of this holy type to the more
typical (and humble, less intriguing and mysterious)
straightforward cone job - an erection ants pop
up all over, common and vulgar - may be part
aesthetics, sure.

But for my part, partly psychological too,
I bet. May be. Oh hell though - even if it is,
we're really talking biological aren't we? We
don't need to lay every impulse and inclination
out nude on a couch and suggestively probe its
every gap and opening with cigars, do we?

No.

I just like it. I really
don't know a thing about ant,
but I know what I like.