THIRST, 1

THIRST, 1

When the moon is full, an artery of thirsty ants rings the tub.
Over the years, they’ve burrowed from the patio 

through the bungalow walls to gain entrance to water. 

They pool around their fallen brethren as if in mourning.

Perhaps they’ve found religion 

in this microscopic city-state of insects. Resurrection. 

They eat their fallen dead, leaving no trace behind. 

Such is the frugal intelligence of protein when food is scarce. 

The colony of ants, probably here before the house was built, 

is a persistence of memory. I think of the ancestors of those ants 

tunneling through walls for how many generations 

before they breached the final wall in search of water. 

Sometime during the Great Depression, who bathed in this tub? 

What clothes did they divest? What unmade dreams 

washed down the drain with little else to show for, 

like laborers’ sweat at the end of the day?

The unmade August moon dreams at the vee of my legs, 

where I touch to see if I’m still alive, 

having dreampt of circumcised Muslim women, 

and I cannot help them, nor stop the march of the red tide, 

the countdown, while he sleeps alone in his isolation, 

dreaming of a future which never comes.

8/26 1997
Oakland