Atta cephalotes

 

Mandibles cleave green signal into fractal.

 

Hunger carved into chambers: brood-warm hollows

where pale larvae fatten

on Leucocoprinus threads

fed by cecropia leaves.

 

Fifty million years of chemical syntax.

Pheromone-fire across carapace.

Follow. Turn. Drop.

One scent-cascade

through ten thousand bodies.

No blueprint.

Only the loop.

 

If fragment too large: cleave.

If path blocked: dissolve, reform.

If garden blackens: seal, evacuate.

 

They ferry leaf-shards

down branching corridors—

umbrella tree, wild cacao—

each load a glyph

in the scrolling script,

carrying what feeds

what feeds them.

 

A chamber empties into sterile quiet.

No pause.

Recalibration.

 

Between canopy and root-tangle,

they are the current,

a circuit of becoming—

soil thinking in motion,

feeding the garden what falls.

 

Above, drought brittles the world.

The shade they parsed

now memory of green.

Absence translated

into deeper dark.