Thursday, May 8, 2008

The Meadow Mouse


1.
In a shoe box stuffed in an old nylon stocking
Sleeps the baby mouse I found in the meadow,
Where he trembled and shook beneath a stick
Till I caught him up by the tail and brought him in,
Cradled in my hand,
A little quaker, the whole body of him trembling,
His absurd whiskers sticking out like a cartoon mouse,
His feet like small leaves,
Little lizard feet,
Whitish and spread wide when he tried to struggle away,
Wriggling like a miniscule puppy.


Now he's eaten his three kinds of cheese and drunk from his
     bottle-cap watering-trough--
So much he just lies in one corner,
His tail curled under him, his belly big
As his head; his bat-like ears
Twitching, tilting toward the least sound.


Do i imagine he no longer trembles
When I come close to him?
He seems no longer to tremble.


2.
But this morning the shoe-box house on the back porch is empty.
Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? --
To run under the hawk's wing,
Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm tree,
To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tomcat.


I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
The paralytic stunned in the tub and the water rising --
All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.

--Theodore Roethke


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