Promotion

There are tried
if not true
religions
working fine
without me.

I no longer marvel at the cunning of the ants
as they lay empire after empire for a mile and a half
along the corners of milk white sidewalks
then dutifully pile in their chambers and columns
just before the first spring hail

or the imprudent engineering  
of barn swallows under tollways
firing up mud caves on bridges’ underbellies
as leviathans more monstrous
than entireties of genetic knowledge
could ever prepare them for
roar throughout their lifetimes
and they build even more,
dangling from adobe nests
like a sect of cliff diving demons
darting through their eyelets

or waterbugs testing the principles of uncertainty
or the earthworm cinching below bluebonnet roots.

Inside, people scramble to remember
what noise they should make
from their vast and complex libraries
of appropriate sounds and gestures
they’ve amassed for such occasions
as when they pass me in the hallways
now that I’m a manager.