RAINE REFLECTIONS
www.RaineReflections.com
Formicarium
© Christopher Raine
Looking down
on ants
wearing khaki shorts
and T-shirts,
branding
their hides
like cattle;
some wore Ray-Bans ®,
others Gucci ®,
some rode bikes,
others cars,
some slept in parkades.
Karl watched
a few of them
in a cluster,
gathering around
the parasol
of a hotdog stand
like the pallbearers
of a dead moth.
The wind was heavy,
the sky blue,
up here,
the sun bright
on Olympus.
“There are too many
ants below,
chewing roots,
drying out
the soil.
Their mounds,
bulbous and sick,
like the bubonic plague,
consuming,
leaving behind
only dust;
a society
of the hive mind.”
From his perch,
he watched them
for a while,
scratching
at his antenna
with hooked claws,
cleaning waste
particulates from
his angular-bulbous head,
ruminating
his insignificant plight.
He never wanted
to be a worker
or a soldier,
for that matter,
seeing the former
in warehouses,
pissing in bottles,
living by
the penalty of time.
He saw the latter,
returning
in severed chunks,
chitinous limbs
cracked like lobsters
from a cheap
restaurant franchise.
Karl was fortunate.
He saw a few queens
in his day
and admired
hourglass figures:
from metasoma thorax,
slender petiole,
to metasoma abdomen
like a whalebone
fetish corset.
His mandibles
salivating,
“Funny how
our wings fall off
after mating.”
When it came time
to strike out
on his own,
he took flight
with a few
of the lads
and winged damsels.
Knowing death
awaited them
after mating,
he played the role
with clever subterfuge,
spreading his wings,
knowing his destiny,
and choosing defiance,
he charted
a different path
to this place.
His veined,
cellophane wings
glistening and long,
his stinger
virginal and pure,
he watched them
with compound eyes.
On life and death,
he made
meticulous notes,
and when he was done,
he scanned the sky
for the dark angel
of night’s feathers.
No longer a slave
to crippling society,
Karl heard
the song and chirps
of angels,
marvelling at Saint Peter’s
compelling horn,
twitching in anticipation,
choosing between life
and death
on his own terms,
he flutters toward
the Valkyrie silhouette
in an epiphany
of prayer.
It came for him,
snatching
and devouring
with snapping
fatality;
he became
a part of something
greater now.