Bachelor Rat

 

There is a bachelor rat

living alone in my neighbor's garage

as I also live alone,

a single dog lady in my lighted box. 

I have begun to feed him

leaving a Tupperware of dog kibble,

french fries, a leaf of lettuce

or whatever, out for him last thing each night.

Watching from the window

I see him, five minutes later, skittering

across the yard like a pleasure

boat on choppy seas, to claim his plunder. 

I eat in the evenings

in front of tv, solving mysteries

as the bachelor rat

also does, always alert for killers.

Predators concern us both

(mine call me up, his lay low in the ground ivy.)

The neighbor behind tries

to poison him, as social media tries to poison me.

We just woke up in these skins,

he in his, me in mine, flesh costumes of the moment,

costumes that get hungry, cold,

ill, old, and any number of other similarities.

Why feed that bachelor rat?

some may ask, aghast. He's nothing but vermin.

I just feel like there are so many cats

set on doing harm to one little rat, or one old woman,

and so I set out his Tupperware

meal last thing while letting my dog out each night.

I wish him good fortune, my simpatico

bachelor rat, to make it through the winter all right.

_______________

The Intermediary

I've left tea on the outside table

a baffle for whatever wanders the woods.

Lance-shaped willow leaves fall 

and alter the prescription, the drowse

of the day and the mind with confusing pall.

What lured these leaves from their mother-branch

to my poor care in the orphaned hour?

What strange embroidery can quicken them again

into their summer suits of pride and motion?

Autumn's alchemist brings gold, then lead.

Here is the potion, the breviary, the wine

fermented from pomegranates, swayed by tannins.

My faith is in teriac and the reading of leaves

in my baked clay mug and the struggling lungs

of my patients un-greening like harvested sheaves.

_________

for Sunday Muse #182. 

Squirrel People

Squirrel people, weird mutants
crouch on rainy branches
cursing me,
cursing themselves.
"We can scale any obstacle, crack any shell,
but we can't open your fucking front door." 

Me,  I am smug,
reading by the fucking fireside,
my dozy comfort a finger at my arboreal lessers.
"Fuck you!" they say.
They are quick, resentful, sodden.
______

A 55 for Kerry.