My Dream of Being a Leaf-Cutter Ant

My Dream of Being a Leaf-Cutter Ant

I dream of building a subsurface maze,
scooping out loads of earth, constructing roads,
great humps and hills and highways. Holidays
are absent from my dream. The warm abodes

I’ll fashion from the soil will last for ages.
Born from an extraordinary mother,
my million kin and I will earn no wages
yet jolly in our job with one another.

We’ll cut up leaves and lug them to our lair
and feed the greenery to wholesome fungi
gorged on by our larvae. We’ll take care
of all our waste so nothing’s ever grungy.

I dream I am an ant. I dream of leaves.
I dream I sip their sap and lap their juices.
I dream that each of us (big, small) receives
just treatment from the queen, which reproduces

enough to keep alive the colony—
a colony which trumps the human race.
Olympian limbs rocket me up a tree
and all my sisters’ faces are my face.