Inside the garden pot the ants

had been busy behind plastic

confined in their imprinted circuitry

patterns of labour, tunnels of itch

now suddenly disturbed by my wrenching

of the Christmas tree,

 

enough years serving its purpose

of annual celebration,

dressed with solar bulbs and red leaves,

lately abandoned

starved of nutrition but stubbornly surviving. 

 

I stripped it of sideshoots

to a perfunctory phallus

as sullen as a forced salute and as stiff. 

 

Air and light revealed the ants

their frantic comings and goings,

discarded gossamer wings lifted

carapaces rolled by spiny legs. 

In two hours time they would be gone

as it they had never existed.