though their muscles are magical, their concentration
like every rigid tree locked dead on a crag.
They will do what they will,
ride in clusters of legs through quick water
to make a new way, or bridge themselves to drowning,
for they cannot be crushed by one another,
their shells and magic too stiff for neighborly error.
Their comrades may not accidentally
stroke away their limbs or jaws.

My dog would wonder
at their persistence.
His chemical rash at the throat
is only slightly preferable to little bugs.
His pride is affronted.
He seems to know choice.
He does know undelayed pain and desire.

Queens may know desire. They may be proud,
but they can hardly move for being fat with juices,
emboweled of new bees, ants, or termites,
and one cannot know that at some height of clay,
a concrete spittled tower gorgeously erupted
from the veldt and lowered sun, somewhere up there--
her pyramid tomb, her sentried citadel--the last drone,
the thousandth unpitied soldier of the hour,
would stand or die for her and never know he loves
so distant and so blank a queenly face.