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Life, actually…

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THUNDERING ANTS, SCURRYING GIANTS

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I am stooping at eye-level beside our kitchen counter, closely watching dozens of tiny ants encircling a dab of insect attractant.

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I could be doing more important things. But at the moment I am transfixed by these indigenous creatures. They are mysterious and inscrutable. Their  unknown intent drives them to act in ways I do not understand.

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I feel like a child again, recalling endless summer days of play and study, study and play. I imagine impossible adventures. I wonder and observe the critters around me. Sometimes I wish I were small enough to engage them.

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Tiny versions of myself scurry up blades of grass, briefly acknowledge a passing scurrier, disappear into the shadows, make way for the next traveler.

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What if the ants were my human size, what if I were their size? Would they be observant, or just too big and too busy to take time? What if ant-sized me had to run for my life to avoid a huge descending foot?

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Do ants even know I exist? Does a guardian ant relate mythologies to its young’uns, tales about near-miss encounters with beings too large to see?

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And, in my case, are there nearby things so humongous that they become invisible? Like thunder? Is thunder the vibrating result of a sky-sized stomp by an entity I cannot see?

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As I gain years and wisdoms I pay less attention to unexplainable things. If a Leviathan calls me by the thunder do I shrug it off and continue my daily rounds, just like the ants?

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Am I a rolling thunder to these minuscule denizens? Have they shrugged me off, too?

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Arising with a groan from the effort of changing from kitchen-counter stoop to bipedal strut, I leave the ants now. They have their world and must protect and maintain it. I must do the same with mine.

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But it is nice to stop to smell the roses now and then…and notice an impossibly small critter running harmlessly amok among the fragrances

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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