(As long as we’re on a mouse theme – )

Small Warmth

Oh, to be a mouse—
a pet, that is, not a wild hated
burrower-in-walls, gnawer, food-stealer,
but gray, with loved and patted fur:
a house-mouse, as it were,
with some small unassuming name to fit one’s size
—to die, be buried and briefly mourned
and then forgotten and replaced.

This is the life,
in a clean-licked nutshell.