God in the Details
by Mike White
I’ve seen to it that ants
carry their dead
in the ceremonial style
of a great long poem
but the distances
are manageable
and how heavy
after all is an ant
when I am myself
a shadow borne
so lightly
Mike White is a Utah poet whose work has appeared in journals including Verse, Poetry, Margie, Fulcrum, The Antioch Review, The Iowa Review, The New Republic, and The Threepenny Review. I’m not able to find much more about him – but I’m looking.
Poetry Friday today is at author amok. Don’t miss Jules’ discovery of William Stafford’s elegant “prayer of a poem;” something you may find yourself reading over and over again.
Beautifully said.
I just got chills all over from this one, and not just ’cause fall is in the air. I love this!
Tadmack,
I love both the poem and its title.
What a find. So spare… This poet knows the limits of words, and knows how to fill just a few to the brim with meaning.
What a great poem — far-reaching thoughts in so few words.
What a beautiful and somehow heart-wrenching poem.
It almost makes me feel sorry for those little ants I keep massacring on my kitchen counter…almost…
Oh I love that, too. It invokes the same emotions for me that others have touched upon here…so sad, yet so beautiful. Such perfect economy of words, too. Jama nails it with “far-reaching.” There’s a lot here. I wanna hang it up and keep studying/pondering it.
How nice to link to Stafford. What a gift that poem is, huh?
“in the ceremonial style/of a great long poem” ahh. How ironic he doesn’t need a great long poem to carry his thoughts from out there to us. Just ants. Love it.
so sparse, yet says so much and lingers so long after. Love it.
Oh, I like this so much — echoing others here, but there’s so much in so little. He’s new to me. Thanks, Tadmack!
Those last three lines–lovely!