“And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger
sextillions of infidels.” –Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Between the subway tracks it wiggles,
GI drab, a mouse the color of the dirt
bedding the rails. The earth quakes
every four minute, and wrenching wheels
make the mouse heart clatter in a cage of roar.
Metal on metal shrieks, mindless of what lives
below the city. All tints and shades of racket
rattle a rodent’s bones, every condyle and ligament
resonating with impending train,
and he bears the insulting smells
of machines, urine, shoes.
Weighing less than a plum,
he crouches as tons of steel
grind and roar inches over his head,
a head the size of a dime, a life as long as his tail,
his heart a coffee bean. Mouse has no money,
No one cares if his children starve, and all
his aunts, uncles, and cousins live like him.