Explaining It

In the woods off Ivory, just out of car-shot

it’s not enough to say a mouse lies snug

in a crib of roots, its fur sleek as babyskin,

Lord the body warm. Too often a name

subverts the pang it answers for, inwit of   

heart-light, the epiphanic clutch. I mean

do you sense with more than a chill the tiny

homely lumpliness of it there in the dirt

as you orphan the dim of a cold October

sun, no wound I can find anywhere

on its, your, my small soft bodykins—yikes

its left ear (the inner skin pink

delicate svelte) twitches a little

and I have this before thought tricks it

whimsically lovely wink of the soul as

mouse-force taking wing until the O-no

letdown when a yellow jacket backs out,

O sweetmeat funk and dandle of the brain

asputter as it launches over frost-curled leaves

and dollarweed seed strewn on the path

like medallions glimpsed the second we—

I mean all of us cold in the twilight—fly.