it happened like this: the rains came, late as usual,
passingly sufficient to turn the desert green and yellow
with high summer’s thirsty flowers growing on the slopes
of ancient volcanoes that rose black, crusty and pumiced.
at the peak of one volcano, in the long-cold cone there swarmed flying ants,
red a dark unto black, wings a shimmering glisten reflecting late afternoon sun.
dancing their mating dance, swirling beyond any other control,
a million uncountable ants at play.
wings shimmered. the sun went down. ants landed, mated, lost their wings.
out from the cool spaces, reeving the volcano came millipedes,
first one here, two there,
then so soon as to seem miraculous, millipedes everywhere,
a thousand of them on the volcano’s rocks, among the high summer’s flowers,
millipedes large and small and each size in between,
brown as fancy cigarettes or small cigars,
floating on undulating fringes of legs that carried them
into the desert night along the flowered, antic slopes.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)