The Mouse
On the floor of a parking garage
I found a dead mouse. It was winter,
the world gone gray outside and in,
and the mouse a part of all that drabness–
the smallest part. He stood
like a wind-up mouse run down at last
but still on its wheels, a fast run
just behind him, and he’d pulled
his paws up tightly under his chin
as if he’d stopped to sniff at the edge
of something important-a mousehole, maybe,
right under his nose and opening
out of the world. His back was arched
against entering there, and every muscle
had frozen in place like a spring.
