Ants nest

On the grass outside the vegetable patch
Dad had put the baking potatoes to dry
in the grooves of a piece
of corrugated iron
and now they are
bagged in old hen food sacks
brought in

Mum's propped the iron up
and the grass beneath is pale and
corrugated to match
and in the curves
ants have wrought a filigree
frail grey metropolis
full of sense to them
as a sentence to my mind
each must have mined grains of sand
one at a time to make the walls

how did they know where to go?
I watch them not knowing, now
that their roof
so sudden there is as sudden not
and all the mystery of their ways
open to the sky and beady eyes
of hens
and me

like an unkind God
as beaks peck up lives small
as panicking full stops

And I wonder if I make a hopeful nest
under a roof
that is just blindness to the truth

and I panic