Thoughts While Waiting
By:Donal Mahoney

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Ruth's at an age
where she's happy
to sit in the sun
under a patio umbrella
and watch a line of ants
curve across a path
carrying seed
to their burrow.

She and her husband
watched ants
parade each summer
for forty years.
Always the same burrow,
Ruben would stress.
But different ants,
life being what it is.

Ruben didn't like the ants.
They reminded him,
he said, of his parents
in line at Dachau,
waiting to find out
if there's a heaven,
wanting to know
if God was watching.


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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.