It's the bee queen we think of,
with her armies and her harems,
her palaces of wax. But the ants
have a queen, too: a queen
in darkness, a queen in labyrinths
as intricate as lungs. They brings her
drops of water bound in their own shining.
She thinks these are stars. And when her people
shake out their wings as fine as newborn fingernails,
when they pour forth from all the small mouths
of the earth -- as, be warned, they will --
on that bright day, they will stream from the green lip
of the hose as you raise it to your mouth.
They will drink, and the sky will darken.
A bit rough, but I thought it was about time I posted something new and risky. And what do you mean it's not a sonnet? I think it's a sonnet.
This is chilling! Will that really happen? (Could it?)
And, is it a sonnet? Aside from the rhyme and metre, it does have the eight and six line arrangement and the progression of ideas.
But--scary!
I like it a lot. It reminds me of those powerful poems I find occasionally on the pages of _Year's Best Fantasy & Horror_. It could be both! Lovely imagery.