ants from a lychee son

sitting by the river in its only dusky shade

unable to change the world that others made

like a son raised least he could eke out peace

living his life from a battered valise

filled with excuses having been said

and what i wanted to say instead

to a son too far to hear the call

flying high still a long way to fall

and ants at my feet, unrelentingly small

the ants from a discarded lychee 

treading on my feet, up my leg

i squash them back

for giving me flack

for maybe a killer sting

that might infect me,
itch and swell me

mistaken as a lychee

keep its venom from our family

my wayward son sets in the east

far from a Formosan feast

where once there was a way back

now crushed on a foreign tarmac

but i must move on, i cannot remain

in this dusky shade overcome with ant pain  

i must find a brighter bench to stay 

from an inundated shade of swarming ants

though a bright son shines behind my pants

pedal onward the path upstream

leaving the spot i thought i’d like to be

sighting a cool gazebo with no treading 

from a son who crawled around inside himself

then came crawling after me*

like ants from lychee on a trail of starving words

i am rewarded by the sweet sound of singing birds

what i would have missed if i had stubbornly stayed

to crush ants for the goal of a shade

June 9, 2018
www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com
 Copyright © 2018 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.

*two lines borrowed from Phil Ochs "Tape from California"