Consider the Ant
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Consider the Ant
1909: Tamanrasset, Hoggar, Algeria
No rain, the wadi dry for months, its side channelsthin to veins of dust. Its bottom-stones crack like eggs.The Tuareg pack their tents, drive their goats to grazein far fields. On my walks, I sometimes find miracles
of food: acacia pods I can pound into edible meal;once, a jerboa I stoned and dressedfor the roasting-spit; once, a snarl of beesflitting from the mouth of a dead jackal,
and inside the carcass’s dark cave, enough honey,sweet and glistening, to fill the bowl of my hands.This morning, I ask the Eternal to show mean ant-hill rising from the stony ground,
rations to share with the Haratin. I am too sluggardlyto consider the ant and her wise ways, to take painsto do good to the Haratin whenever I may.The ant treasures the seeds of tullult grass,
hoards them in her tunnels. When I find an ant-hill,I invite the Haratin children—a few, at least—to dine on tullult seed porridge prepared by me,pestle-lifter, earth eyer, bandit among the ants. [End Page 246]
William Kelley Woolfitt teaches creative writing and American literature at Lee University in Cleveland, TN. He is the author of a book of poetry, Beauty Strip (Texas Review Press, forthcoming), and a fiction chapbook, The Boy with Fire in His Mouth (Fiction Southeast, 2014). His poems and stories have appeared in many journals, including Shenandoah, Michigan Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, and River Styx. These poems belong to a larger collection, Charles of the Desert (Paraclete Press, forthcoming), a book-length sequence about the life of Charles de Foucauld. wwoolfitt@leeuniversity.edu
