ant camp

When we were five years old
Tina and I ran an ant camp.

It was a bucket of water
with some grass in it.

I would pinch up black ants
and drop them in.
Free swimming lessons.

Tina would revive the drowning ones,
muttering comfort. I thought
they should have tried harder.

I guess she had more
compassion than I did.

Nineteen years later I fell down
in the wet grass. Tina whispered:
How does your thorax feel?

I laughed and laughed
but I had to stop. It was
beginning to hurt my thorax.