Balming breeze meets a chair set in mulch
making bearable the summerfying air–
a ritual of writing has been resumed.
Though the body’s sore from eight hours of working
the mind’s a buzzing hive of ideas
just waiting to see what sentiments will grow.

I’m feeling antsy
maybe because they keep descending
from the branches like tiny bombers.
Wouldn’t you like to have the durability of an ant
immune to terminal velocity,
able to fall from any height unscathed?

I’m going to drink an ant someday
because it will have taken a swim in my beverage 
and I won’t know it’s there
until it’s tumbling along my tongue.
But I try not to think about that too much–
for all I know it’s already happened.

Something else is needling me
like the pine’s gentle rain of miniscule missiles.
Goals not yet achieved and stories not yet told.
Seems a cat’s stolen my tongue from the ants
unless it’s just some catkins
licking me from above.

Then a grenade of a pinecone
skips across the bill of my hat
with the reminder that healing is war
and I’m a goddamn super-soldier. I know this
from everything the trees keep throwing at me.
Was that a tick I just flicked away?

Aw shucks, I’m starting to get sappy now
or maybe it’s the giant glob that dropped
into my flip-flop while my foot was free.
Now the bottom of my sole is sticky;
unpleasant, but what can you do? It’s risk assumed
from habitually seeking serenity 
sitting under the trees.