Novice

The June heat smells of sun and skin.
A black ant darting over the concrete step
runs across my toes. When I wiggle them
it pours itself down the slope of my pinky
and continues on its erratic path.

I watch the ant and want its connection with detail.
I envy its intimate knowledge of surface--
its confrontation with the pockmarks in concrete, in skin

its bodily understanding of the change in landscape
from sidewalk to grass blade to weed leaf
to the breathing movement of blood-heated flesh

its commonplace awareness of the difference
in a centimeter between sunlight and shade
the indifference of obstacle in tree or rock:

The world in its infinite variety merely something
to be encountered and climbed over, a path
in the certain, daily labor for a colony's survival

while I lay my feet over vast areas of the microscopic
unaware of the minute mountains and valleys
pressing against the cells of my soles, feeling air,
overwhelmed by sky.