The flushed little ducks. Each under their hatch shelters—amble out and turn about. And they hear the choked stream butting its head over recalcitrant rushes, sending its long eddy-fingers to crook and gather, far down the bank.
From the hole the ants run, ‘versing the brows of the sandy stream. The stream opens out, a small flush of ocean. Wide-strewn clusters of blackened ants, all around the trickle’s banks... Click-talkers, and long-way walkers ambling out over the crescent curve. Towards the left, a noble stand of wide-hinded houses, shingle fronts, sloping wisps of lawn; to the right, a secluded little jostle of flats.
Ants dash in their several directions, their rudded backs arched far into the solid curve of the sun...and under the arches drawn brightly in the sky, they gasp up the hillocks of sandy-feel soil, ‘round the hard ribs of the flourishing grass.
The grass stands in ever-ending waves demarcated by half-done signs, by half-done fences, a fence-strand that walks right up to a good lone tree... The ants rustling ‘round its roots, and talking. Past that by walking, though you may take care to look over your shoulder—the dumbling ducks among the reeds, who plot their strategy in tumbles for wars with the geese—their navies slice prow-first through the stagnant waters of these very inner parts.
-2001
