Theirs is a perfection of pure form.
Nobody but has his proper place and knows it.
Everything they do is functional.
Each foray in a zigzag line
Each prodigious lifting
Of thirty-two times their own weight
Each excavation into the earth’s core
Each erection
Of a crumbly parapetted tower —

None of these feats is a private pleasure,
None of them done
For the sake of the skill alone —

They’ve got a going concern down there,
A full egg-hatchery
A wet-nursery of aphids
A trained troop of maintenance engineers
Sanitation experts
A corps of hunters
And butchers
An army

A queen
Each
Is nothing without the others, each being a part
Of something greater than all of them put together
A purpose which none of them knows
Since each is only
The one thing that he does. There is
A true consistency
Toward which their actions tend.
The ants have bred and inbred to perfection.
The strains of their genes that survive survive.
Every possible contingency
Has been foreseen and written into the plan.

Nothing they do will be wrong.
~Daniel Hoffman “Ants” from Beyond Silence

The ant in the shadow of this blade of grass
Is indifferent to my presence, to the action
Of the day, to the creaking of the limbs
Of the sycamore, to the sun lowering itself
Slowly from the scaffolding of the sky…

The ant has not moved.  It is deep in meditation.

…Ants understand
The principle of undefiled silence.  My ant glows
Like charcoal now in the lengthening rays of the sun.
I kneel and whisper, “Look up at me.  I’m here.”
~John Gilgun from “The Ant in the Shadow of This Blade of Grass”

Today, when I could do nothing,
I saved an ant...

Small black ant, alone,
crossing a navy cushion,
moving steadily because that is what it could do.

Set outside in the sun,
it could not have found again its nest.
What then did I save?

It did not move as if it was frightened,
even while walking my hand,
which moved it through swiftness and air.

Ant, alone, without companions,
whose ant-heart I could not fathom—
how is your life, I wanted to ask.

I lifted it, took it outside.

This first day when I could do nothing,
contribute nothing…

…I did this.
~Jane Hirshfield from “Today When I Could Do Nothing”

The other day, as I sat down in the grass to take pictures, I felt a tickle at the nape of my neck. I reached up, felt something, and when I looked to see what it was, I found a tiny ant crushed in my fingers.

Suddenly it felt like things were crawling everywhere on me, especially my scalp. I shook out my hair and clothes and found there weren’t any more ants. It was only one unfortunate, defenseless victim who chose the wrong place and time to inhabit me.

As a child, I was fascinated by the ant hills in the woods and fields of our small farm. I would track yards and yards of ant trails from the busy mounded colonies to tree trunks and other sources of food, watching the single-file, single-minded insects heading through all sorts of terrain to sustain their community. Having ants crawling on me wasn’t a problem then – they were part of my exploration of creation … sometimes they explored me. So I’m sympathetic to a solitary ant’s curiosity.

When we share the same few square inches of landscape, we want to ask one another: How is your life? hoping to fathom each other’s heart. We are each of us a part of something greater than all of us put together.

In this small corner of the internet, I share words or pictures I hope might bring a smile, a nod of recognition, or a moistened eye, wanting to find common ground with people I likely will never meet in the chaos of existence.

So I ask you every now and again
because I want to know:
how is your life?

Though I may do nothing else of import
in this scatter-mess of life’s anthill, I can do this:
I’m here, exploring and caring,
listening for your comments, feedback and messages.
Nothing you say will be wrong…