Sport 33: Spring 2005
Elizabeth Smither
Elizabeth Smither
Poem to a mouse about to be caught in a trap
Last night it was blue vein which
you left alone. Tonight Edam
and a sharper trap, a hair-trigger
thing. Go. I send vibes to you
who has made the cupboards your tenement
the tea towels your bed, your toilet
uncontrolled, I read, a design flaw
gnawing the drawer that held the four
and sugar, baking powder, cornflour
(all removed. You have the run
of this and leave twenty droppings
as you pass). You might
be eating the recipe books to make a nest.
I've left some furniture: the plates
in white stacks you skirt, the cups
with nothing to sip, the deep pie dish
the egg beater: should you tangle in it
I'll take you outdoors to unwind.
But tonight the trap. You've undone, wise one,
two lesser traps, taken out the cheese.
Please go. Outside. There's grain
underneath the bird feeder in the lemon tree.
Mouse burial
Here comes a mouse skeleton down to you
my old black cat, departed ten years
yourself dust and bones inside a pillowcase
and with lambs' tongues growing above you.
How many field mice you brought it, condescending
gifts you rarely ate, though birds were different.
Now in the underworld of unheard streams
passing far below you, known only by whiskers
and instinct, as forgiveness for dying is, I
bring you this small trap-caught fat mouse
who died with his eyes glazed, teeth fastened on
a square of Edam, under the trap's sharp note.