This week’s poem, by Shir Kehila, tells of watching how some human landscaping work affects the lives of ants. I love this poem’s intricate attention to the ants’ ventures, its shifting gaze on the privileged mansion where the speaker works, and its quiet empathy for the creatures’ plight. 

Kehila is a writer and translator based on Mount Desert Island. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Off Assignment, Majuscule, Indiana Review and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Columbia and was the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Monson Arts Residency.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

Colony

Behind the mansion, I sit by a bucket of weeds,
one knee pressed to the smooth, hot skin
of what my boss calls The Back Road, pulling
crown vetch from its pebbles, as if
clearing pores. Near the purple mountain
of my sneakers, ants carry butterfly wings
up the Road, then disperse, dropping
their translucent treasure. I watch
their panic, a familiar one, and know
they can’t find their nest—their geography
upended by my work. Dirt
fills my nails and underwear,
spilling down on the wet floors
of the public restroom
by the beach, where I go, too dirt-y
to come into the mansion. Back
on The Back Road, I see the small harbor
framed like a postcard, the mansion
finally fitting, too, in one frame—distance
freeing me
of my smallness. The ants scurry
and sting, a displaced colony. I would have told them,
if I could,
about my home.

– Shir Kehila

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Colony,” copyright 2025 by Shir Kehila, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.