Terminal

Terminal

​Around this ursine skull there strolls an ant,
Antennae waving, black, of middling size;
He circumambulates the lidless eyes,
Then treads the teeth where moss has taken plant.
 
Into the lipless, tongue-less mouth he pops,
This cave where lick and lap, where grunt and growl
Once livened hot, wet flesh. Then out he prowls
Tap-tap, the feelers touch, tap-tap, then stops:
 
He gazes cross the cranial expanse,
This comic field of sun-bleached ditch and dent,
This slope of bone in which a life paid rent,
Transformed by time to playground for this ant.
 
We leave our bear, the ant to grass, and I
To darkling plain beneath a blackened sky.