Of Ants and Men

I’ve got a problem with ants.

The little black ones that

often invade homes.

Especially in summer.

Maybe they are looking

for water, maybe that’s

just when I notice them.

But I don’t think so because

that’s when they crawl

off the counter onto me.

My personal trouble is

that most of time I can’t

see them, The countertop

is some kind of dark granite,

speckled like coffee grounds,

chocolate, and licorice.

Those tiny little ants are

invisible to me until I feel them

on my arms or sometimes

they make it all the way

to the back of my neck.

My Mom’s Dust Bowl immigrant

family called them sugar ants.

And the little yellowish-brown

ones, were grease ants.

Because that’s what they

like to eat. Good enough.

I wouldn’t expect them to use

scientific binomial classification, like

Tapinoma sessile or Solonopsis xyloni.

Sugar or grease ants is more

functional, you are what you eat.

The ones I learned to fear

at a very tender age were

the little red ants, so-called fire ants.

Because they bite. And they always

seem to come in swarms of hundreds,

thousands. Or so it felt like when they

climbed onto my poor bare feet.

Later on when I was old enough

and curious enough and wise enough

to not go bare foot at Grandpa

Smith’s farm, I convinced my

Mom and Dad that I needed

an ant farm. The one with a little

green plastic farm houses, a windmill,

some trees and a barn sandwiched

between two sheets of clear acrylic.

Came with sand and a jar of ants.

So you didn’t have to find your own.

Sugar ants, so you could feed them

sugar water and watch them construct

their tunnels. The kit was called

Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm.

That name may have convinced

my Dad, Milton, that it would be

a positive learning experience.

Of course eventually the ants all died.

Not sure if that was my fault or just

the natural life span of ants.

I was more intrigued by larger,

more hazardous arachnids,

like black widow spiders and scorpions.

I captured scorpion in the woods and kept it

in a pickle jar with some leaves and bark

in my desk when I was in 4th grade.

I fed it the bountiful tent caterpillars

that were plaguing our region that year.

This was the source of much amusement

for Mom when she told the story

of parents' reactions when they opened

my desk on back to school night.

As for ants though, I would rather

know about them from a distance.

In a book, a tv show or movie. I had book

with a fold out illustration of an Army ant

bivouac that was terrifying. Because it

said they eat everything, no matter

how big or fierce.

Four or five decades later

I read Edmund O. Wilson’s book

“Biophilia” about the innate human

love of the natural world of living things,

plants or animals, vertebrates or not.

And apparently his special love,

his lifelong fascination, was ants.

That tells me a lot about the capacity

for all embracing love. Ants?

As someone else once said, anything

that organized has to be communist.

I think that God must love them plenty

because he sure made a lot of them.

15,700 named species and even

more yet to be identified.

I guess they didn’t take up

a whole lot of space on Noah’s Ark.

But my prayer to God or Gaia

or Buddha and with apologies to Jains

and vegans, I just want to get them

out of the kitchen or crawling on my body.

James Brown sang, I got ants in my pants

and I need to dance. Well, alright, JB,

but I don’t need some big fine sister

to give me a chance. Ahhh, Good God,

Lift me up, you know I feel it.

Wish Fulfillment

I had a giant topographic map

of Sequoia National Park

on the wall next to my bed

when I was twelve.

Where I could look at

the dashed black lines

that represented trails

snaking along the Kaweah River

or the Kern. Over Timber Gap

or switch-backing up the dense

brown contour lines to alpine lakes

high above ten thousand feet.

I fantasized about lot of trips

in that wilderness where the Golden

trout swam and the junipers grew.

That was fine in daylight,

like in the morning before I got

out of bed. At night, with

the lights off, all I had were

my hungry heart and mind.

And what I wanted, what I wished for,

what I begged and tried to bargain

with God for, was for a girlfriend.

A girl who would love me.

And I would love her forever.

I had always wished for that.

When I was four, I went across

the street every day to play

with Carla and her sister.

They had an LP of all the scenes

from The Wizard of Oz and we played

it over and over, we knew all the words.

We especially liked the part where

Glinda asks Dorothy if she has

brought her broom and Dorothy

hasn’t so Glinda says

“Then you’ll have to walk”.

Carla and I told our Moms

that when we grew up, we were

going to get married. But we moved

from Modesto before I turned five.

In second grade, the favorite game

at recess was “girls chase the boys”

and when they caught them,

kiss ‘em and give ‘em cooties.

Nobody chased me. I wanted them to,

cooties or not, especially if Joanie

would kiss me, but she never did.

In third and fourth grade I had friend

who happened to be a girl, Roseanne.

She lived at the dairy across the creek

from our tract home. We climbed trees,

caught blue belly lizards, romped in

the hay loft in the barn.

I wanted her to be my girlfriend,

but we had so much fun doing all

those other things. I never

had the nerve to tell her. Afraid

it would ruin what we did have.

We climbed a lot of trees and

caught a lot of lizards and then

she moved away.

The next year I had crush

on Sharon G, and the year after that

on Sharon W, but I don’t think

they ever really noticed me.

Maybe Sharon W, but she had

serious boyfriends.

I had a map on my wall and

tear-filled prayers that were never

deeply answered for fifty years.

Until now. So I don’t need to have

that "if you only had one wish,

what would it be?" fulfilled any more.

Because it has, in full.

The Assistant

The day bordered on cold,

all the men and women

wore long coats. And they

gathered in the square

to peer through small panes

of dark glass or between

their fingers at the noon

sun as it was slowly

eclipsed by the moon.

My stepfather, Eugene Atget

said, “Léon, set the tripod here.

Quickly, while the people are still

so engaged in watching the eclipse.

I did as he instructed and 

removed a glass photographic

plate in it’s protective frame

and handed it to him.

He stuck his head under

the black cloth draped over

the heavy wooden camera

and composed his shot.

Never look directly at the sun

he warned me. If you wish

to become a photographer

you must protect your eyes.

I did very much want

to become a photographer

and my mother, Valentine had

persuaded Eugene to teach me.

Which at this time mainly

consisted of me carrying

the big tripod and a case

of sensitized glass negatives.

It was fascinating to see him work,

to notice where he set the camera

and what he chose to photograph.

Sometimes I wasn’t sure

what he was looking at until

we returned to his studio and

developed the plates and made

the seemingly magical process

contact prints darkened by the sun.

Sometimes it might be an quiet

street or just a stairway, a door,

a crooked tree in a garden.

The photos of people on the street

were some of my favorites,

a man with a heavily loaded handcart,

someone reading a newspaper,

a prostitute smiling from a doorway.

My very most favorite ones though

were the shop windows.

With mannequins looking like actors

on stage or sometimes like spirits

from another world, ghostly

when seen in juxtaposition with

reflections off the window glass.

The eclipse was over and tthe people

were dispersing, but our day had

many hours yet of walking the streets.

First we were to meet Monsieur Degas

at his favorite cafe in Montparnasse.

To discuss a commission to provide

photographs for one of his paintings.

I hope that one day Monsieur Lautrec

will ask for some source images

at Moulin Rouge. Perhaps I could

have my first experience of absinthe

and perchance have a conversation

with one of the danseuses.