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Of course you know it’s Poetry Month…
but do you know that
the wonderful and
mouth-wateringly
delicious Jama Rattigan
has herded poet bloggers
in the Kidlitosphere onto
her site  this month?

Thank you, Jama!

 

(And check out my group blog,
TeachingAuthors.com!
Every Friday when we talk
poetry, poetry, poetry!)

 

I write a poem each day; during Poetry Month 2015 I’m sharing *PPPs 

Welcome to Poetry Month 2015!

Eli and I will be feeding you one PPP per day for Poetry Month this year.  What is a PPP, you ask?  A *Previously Published Poem.  I have so many poems in so many anthologies, books and magazines, Eli thought I should snap a leash on one each day this month and give it a walk around the block.  So that’s what we’re doing this year.  Enjoy!

(once you click on the title of the poem to the right,
the post shows up below ↓ )

April 26

FIRE ANTS

FIRE ANTS
by April Halprin Wayland

All for one and one for all!—our tribal cry

Flood waters rise!
Quick, form a ball—
our larvae, pupae, eggs and Mother Queen inside!

We roll this writhing globe,
take turns on top,
so all breathe air, so all survive.

Trapping air in body hair,
even underwater,
we’re alive.

We float this boat of bodies bobbing…BAM!
We’ve hit a tree! We swarm the trunk
and wait for rising rivers to recede.

All for one and one for all!—our tribal cry

At last—the end of rain!
We build a mound—
it rises two feet high on a soggy field of grain.

And if a passer-by
comes near our new terrain?
It will feel pain.

Grasshopper, rat
song bird or cat—

All for one and one for all!—our tribal cry

this trespasser will fry.

published in Nasty Bugs–poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2012)

For an exceptionally cool picture of a floating fire ant ball, see: http://claycoleman.tripod.com/id180.htm

“The entire colony of ants abandon their mound when floods arrive. They then bind together into a ball that floats on the flood waters…The ants within this living, seething mass reposition themselves so that no ant is left underwater for too long…”

Fire ants are able to survive by creating a rotating ball, forming a protective sphere around the colony queen.

poem © 2015 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

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