by L. Ward Abel
He built an ant hill by the fence line
and thought it was the world.
And he painted too
the dry fields there—
westerly, ragged, worn-out,
their only tinge
the blood on his brush.
He let the grotto go wild
near a long wall of cottonwoods
until a unison of light
with breathing
would later return.
And he wrote with
something of an accent—
like ones heard in old
groceries on dirt road corners
known to locals and
only to a few of them.
His novels explored the theory
of colors
without color, without words
just shades, gradation
from hearing to vision,
etcetera.
He built an ant hill
by the fence line
and thought
it was the world.
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Galway Review, Worcester Review, Main Street Rag, others), and he is the author of four full collections and eleven chapbooks of poetry, including Green Shoulders—New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023), and The Teller’s Road (Bottlecap, 2025). He is a retired lawyer and teacher of literature, he writes and plays music, and lives in rural Georgia.