Excavation
- Excavation
They'd carved—(this army of ants)in the gravel—an expressway!
My son and I stood watchingconstant traffic.Frenzied comingsand goings.
Aztecs. Egyptians.Giant blocks heavedshoulder to shoulder,bits of leaf and bark.
The hive mounding,grain by grainproudly skyward.Whatever their plan
our lunchtime ended.My son in the backhoeand I with my spaderipped the earth
beneath them. Anothercivilization lost. Buried.We laid a hundredyards of crushed-rock [End Page 23]
driveway that afternoon.All the while, glancingover our shoulders.Feeling small. [End Page 24]
Lowell Jaeger teaches creative writing at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell, Montana. He has published two collections of poems and several chapbooks. Recently he compiled and edited an anthology of Montana poets, Poems Across the Big Sky, which sold more than 1,000 copies 5 weeks after publication. Several of his poems are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Atlanta Review, the Coe Review, Poetry Flash, Georgetown Review, Big Muddy, Antioch Review, Louisiana Review, Pacific Review, Hawaii Review, Poetry East, and the California Quarterly. His third collection of poems, Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep, was published by Arctos Press in 2008. Currently Lowell Jaeger serves as editor of Many Voices Press and is busy compiling New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from western states.
