Dead Ant in the Salt Shaker     She emerged from the warm, dark chambers of the nest, emerged knowing only to seek beyond her teeming sisters, emerged to probe for food, for invisible traces of rivals.   She followed first the densely scented trails, a world mapped with itself, then, driven to find, she ventured where her antennae tapped, tapped, registered nothing.   She wandered for a while, sure-footed, swift, and found at last a vertical surface, its sheer smooth sides bearing faint hints of living origin — food for her sisters, her queen.   She ascended, spiraling, higher, higher, finally reaching a summit of holes like the caves that bristled with the business of her sisters — but here the whisper of life fell silent.   She entered, found no footing, fell into a lifeless white sand that registered nothing she knew how to want, nothing she could bear back to the nest as news of food, or water, or war.   She tapped about for traces of her tentative spiraling ascent to the summit of holes, tapped for more than this meaningless dune — every direction blocked by smooth, obdurate walls.   She climbed, she fell, again and again and again, she climbed, she fell, one by one her limbs stiffened, failed; at last, she fell back into the white desert and expired.     © Michael Fleming New York, New York October 2004