POEM - ANT HOUR

it had frosted in the desert overnight
and when I left in the morning
to go to work
ten thousand sugar ants
snuck in through an old water pipe
and marched in a solid line
as thick as a quarter
across the entire house
to where the cats ate their tuna.
I came back at noon and screamed,
“what the shit is that?”
and I spent my lunch hour
making a trip to the hardware store for munitions
to commit a grand scale genocide
of senseless beasts
and then cleaned up the whole mess
with a mop and bucket.
when I returned from work in the evening
everything was ship shape
and I had a hard time believing
if the whole thing had actually happened.
I asked my friend
(who was renting the house)
if she’d ever had ants
and she said,
“no, I’ve never seen a single one in here.”
I went to the fridge
and grabbed a beer
and sat down and said,
“hmm. Just how weird will things get?”