We Who Inhabit The Earth

by Philip Vassallo

A spider pursues an ant up our bedroom wall.
We lie in bed, too weary to stop the killing,
too warm beneath quilts to turn and bear witness
as they scramble from our field of vision
and create their miniscule carnage
just above our heads.

It's been Monday all winter.
The window doesn't open,
dead-bolted to the jamb
from three months' freeze
and the radio says the thaw won't start
till the cold front presses deeper in earth,
petrifying the root system
and howling its gray song
across the asphalt-covered tundra.

The insects must have been here
living with us all winter,
crawling and squeezing past
our whispers spraying the dark,
legs coiling on springs,
cries breaking our love strides,
snores stunning the circumvolution of the room's draft,
revolting from the shapes
of our last moments of consciousness.

To these insects we are breathing stones,
cliffs that forever rise
to pound and sear the earth,
cataclysms they have learned to live with,
we are monsters exhumed
from the cinder blocks and two-by-fours
enclosing us.
They know us well:
so few appear before our thundering presence,
only the deranged or starving ones.
Still, we shudder imagining the inevitable:
the spider disemboweling the ant and
spewing the undigested carcass
before we rise to cleanse the night
and start another day of work.

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