by Kevin T. McEneaney
Between Athens and Thebes, the grand highway
had three hundred sixty-five stone statues
of philosophers, poets, and dramatists.
Thebans and Romans destroyed those statues.
Empires and egos have scratched earth’s dirt,
thinking they own the ground they stand on,
but the ants, myrmidons, ever owned earth
since dinosaurs cavorted above them.
Ants have a successful family life,
own the whole globe except Antarctica.
Descended from wasps, they have dug the earth
for a 170 million years,
yet men appear to think they are gods,
that the earth is mere clay in their image.
