February 23rd 2026

 

intent to cycle

the wind is something fierce

and I am lazy

© Rachel Green February 2026

A Reformation

An act of cruelty when I was a child

maybe fifteen or sixteen- after my mother died

and I had taken on the large garden as a project.

When she was still here, and I was wee

I fell into an ant's nest -- now this is Britain,

so we don't have bullet ants or those buggers

who chew their way inside your skin for fun

but we had red ants who bite and sting

and black ants who makes supply lines 

into the bags of sugar in the pantry

and spend the whole week depleting the jam-making supplies,

and I fell into the former, of course.

The smell of chamomile lotion still brings to mind

the scabs and welts those ants bestowed.

So rebuilding the high-sloped rockery

I came upon a red ant nest, provoking a ten-year fear

to send me running to the kitchen

and returning with a kettle of boiling water.

I hope their deaths were quick but at the time

it was revenge I was seeking for the crying six-year old inside.

But the next day, when I returned to work some more,

the surviving ants had laid their dead in perfect rows,

as if to display their necropolis to God

and beg the answer "why?"

 

© Rachel Green February 2026