Like Ants Upon A Stump Poem by Joe Bisicchia

We labor up and off our green beach chairs, the lady and I, for the true, precarious view at ledge, there at roof's edge, so many feet above street, to see little beings push and shove and make their own way about. She's first to notice it. There had been a sprite broccoli sprout in the past, now gone. Poor tree. So nature lovers that we are, we burrow down elevator eight floors to see what is left there of nature now.

Tree, your roots had pushed up curb nastily and now you exist like this, to be so flat a stump so level down here upon concrete earth. Axman had determined this as deserved.
Ants now climb your altar, and we wonder, we wonder what they may wonder of you, of your lost height, of their lost green tower. But their job still works with current power. They climb as if no treason defeats them.

And then, we see what we see with surprise. Pardon our eyes for not noticing this from our haughty height at first, but sometimes you just have to step up close. Tree, see, you still sprout greenery, a soft but sure stem from what seemed an ineffective flat. And the ants, they go on like constant Truth as if nothing's amiss.

So, we climb back up to our flat, take some juice, get back to the roof, view the steady flow of little beings as they come and constantly go. Then we labor from the ledge back to our beach chairs, greening higher knowledge, and she feels for the lone hair atop my bald head.



Published by Other People's Flowers,2019