Ants on a Hot Pan

The individual ants
Are doomed, but the colony
Almost always comes out fine.

This a broad principle,
A Fibonacci spiral
Or a Mandelbrot fractal,

Popping up across all scales—
Individual seedlings
On the shady forest floor,

Individual neurons
Pruned from developing brains,
Individual tickets

In national lotteries,
Individual soldiers
In a Pyrrhic victory,

Individual beings
Leading individual
Lives in the system of life.

We ourselves are not alive.
We can’t scramble from the pan,
Lucky words that can’t be ants.