First mouse

Accomplishments must be named where we find them.

First mouse.

We celebrate

With her.

The grandfather cat

Left his first mouse

On top of the dryer

Headless.

She wanted us to see it

Alive and moving.

The mouse

Scooted out the door.

Oh she was disappointed,

Has been looking for it

Ever since.

We think a second mouse

May be

In the offing.

Predictability

We try to find consistency and inevitability in the most interesting places.

Yesterday the internet was out

All day

As if to say

I know the Comcast person

Arrives on Monday

To change our provider.

No one likes change.

No thing likes change.

Still change comes

Irregularly,

Inevitably.

Yesterday we think we caught

The last mouse,

Released him in the same place

As the other two,

Watched as he climbed a tree

To our face level,

Then scrambled down

To find the other two.

Today all four traps

Were empty.

Perhaps we caught the last mouse.

Perhaps not.

Today the internet works consistently.

The Comcast person is due to arrive

Any minute.

More tracks

The snow beckons outside.  Paths have been shoveled, roads have been plowed.  There are still vast backyard stretches, even fields, which call for snow angels.

I remember years ago

Fresh fallen snow

In the moonlight

A smudge of tracks

Tiny paw prints,

Thin line connector,

One mouse

Braved the journey.

Today

In the sun

In places no mouse

Even squirrel

Has dared to run,

Vast blank fields

Of snow

Call like Circe

For snow angels.

Cat clock

I gave the cat clock to my beloved years ago now. Then we got a live cat the same shape as the clock.  We have only noticed the similarity recently.  There is no mouse pendulum, moving or unmoving, under the live cat.  He seems happy, either way.  On occasion we find a mouse left, like a present, on top of the dryer in the basement.  Like the mouse upstairs, it does not move.

We have a cat clock

On the dining room wall.

The mouse pendulum

Stopped moving,

Years ago now.

The hands

Still keep time.

The second hand sweeps

The cat*s body

Once a minute,

As it should.

The mouse

Underneath the cat

Remains

An unmoving part

Of the whole.

From time to time

We talk of reanimating

The mouse.

Still

He seems safer

The way he is.