Ink Mounds

Words make fine kin to harvester ants.
We burrow under rumination
Where thought’s soils are loose and more minor

Memories lie, abundant as lost
Microvertebrate fossils of shrews,
Squirrels, and the teeth of extinct beavers

Small enough to pinch between fingers.
Heaps of miniature specimens
Litter the entrance of language,

So that you only need to have words
Underfoot a few years. Read enough
And you’ll find your own old memories,

Many whole families long extinct.
To recall them, just sift through some ink.