Ants

They clean up this world’s messes:
the rotten plum,
the dropped ice cream cone’s goo,

the coffee’s scum

in a paper cup,
the inebriate’s acidic updoing:

all this is the ant’s linoleum,
the ant’s waxed floor,
all beautiful to the ant,

the ant’s grocery store

costing exactly nothing
except to lick,

if that is indeed what ants do,

anyway clean up
what others have left behind,
not as gifts, exactly,
but what is no longer unwanted
and without a clue

as to what the cleanup might cost,
what the mess might do
to an ant or other insect’s stomach.
Wahoo! Wahoo! Wahoo!
Hoowaa! Hoowa!