Ants

After we have all gone to bed
they get out the board game of their life.

They move outside the spaces,
under the kitchen ledges, along cracks,
forging the rogue lines of their graphs,

breaking their ranks to attack a fleck,
to drink at the crater of a sauce drip,
to capture the rubble of a biscuit.

And if we wake from the terrible dream,
heart competing, scores unsettled,
and if we happen to rise for water,
there we will find them,

loyal as dogs,
excavators of dirty plates,
lifting the great weight
beyond our limits.