A convoy of tiny black ants rolls across
the cover of the book you left on the floor
beside the old porch swing, and for the last
hour, I have amused myself by flicking
every fourth ant away from the line of his peers,
just a few inches. Even that momentary isolation
panics him, and he scrambles, jitter-legged,
to reorient himself into the normal processions
of his tiny black life. A few inches, a few hundred
miles. It's a silly thing, the disruption created
from being beside a person and then not being
beside them any more.