The day Jane Hirshfield’s poem went viral—
the one where she saves the life of an ant—
 
I saw a lone ant run straight down the wall 
and got a tissue and squashed it.
 
At our house, we save spiders, beetles, crickets, 
and every other bug that strays inside, catching 
 
them in cups and shaking them out the door—
but not ants.
 
Ants mount invasions, always after whatever it is 
we have, sending scouts in advance of battalions—
 
we’ve seen them swarm across the floor, turn into
a ball, rolling crumbs to a crack in the wall. We’ve 
 
talked to them, begging, please don’t come in, 
stay outside and live—
 
but they come anyway, full of manifest destiny, 
a little America on steroids.
 
Still, after Jane Hirshfield, I feel unholy.
 
If it matters, when I kill an ant, I say I’m sorry—
I love the earth so much it hurts.
                        

I hear them less and less. 
Their racket used to arrive 
 
at dawn, follow me from 
room to room—now I fill 
 
water dishes and wait 
for their descent—the flutter, 
 
the chase, the parables—
but there are no five-note calls,
 
and the doves who do come 
are smaller, darker—they arrive
 
at sunset and roost in silence.
Do they even know the refrain 
 
that drove me crazy, 
that I finally came to love, 
 
that used to remind me 
what I have to do?
                        

She’d have sold her soul for a normal 
first name—but somehow she survived 
the childhood taunts, grew tall and gangly, 
 
all bones and angles, with an alto drawl 
sweet as sorghum. There was no other mother 
like her in Simsbury, Connecticut in the 60s—
 
boisterous, hilarious, not a Puritan bone 
in her body. Uncomplaining, she bore
the horrors of blizzards and ice
 
thrust upon her by her husband’s job 
transfer—she became our Girl Scout 
leader, kept us in stitches at monthly 
 
meetings in the library. She came running
the day I cried among the stacks, passed over 
for a part in the class play—her big, warm 
 
Southern hug saved me. So did her fried 
chicken, which I had often, since her daughter 
was my best friend. Crowded at the kitchen 
 
table, her four kids toed an invisible line, 
addressing their parents as Ma’am and Sir 
while Precious served up crispy drumsticks, 
 
okra, and grits that never quit—
her parable of loaves and fishes.