The femur of an ant sustains a wound?
No fear! Her friends come round to amputate it.
The injured ant is brave. (They don’t sedate it.)
Her tight-knit colony is super-tuned
to spot all troubles, never apathetic
to nest-mates. Every helper is a hero.
Each one of them, despite receiving zero
training, is a natural-born medic.
They diagnose, see if the wound’s infected
or sterile, and then treat accordingly
(like surgeons you or I might go to see).
Damaged or not, no member is neglected.
They work for forty minutes on her leg
to lop it off. At first, they lick and lick
the wound so clean, no germ will make her sick.
Mouths moving up her limb, she doesn’t beg
her mates to stop. Stoic, calm, collected,
she sits there while the surgeons work intently,
gnawing at her shoulder — far from gently.
With five remaining legs, feeling respected,
she walks off as if nothing is amiss
with feelings of contentment — or even bliss.
With Primal Instinct as their sole director,
she’s confident her kinfolks will protect her.
*
(Appeared in The New Verse News.)
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