wall-storer, floor-joist-walker, sable-backed snack-thief,

peering back with your shining black-bead eyes

at this foolish human. You, with your cartographic snout,

capable of mapping your way to a crumb hidden

behind cupboard doors and steel walls, who capture

a tasty treasure and travel through plaster and dust

past large sleeping mammals whose incisors

are longer than your head, back to your small

and writhing pink children, who are tucked in a nest

of dryer lint in the sleeve of the leaf-packed gutter,

the soft lint, stealthily stolen from the trash bin,

in order to warm their hairless, squinty, no-bigger-

than-my-thumbnail bodies. Oh field mouse, I am not

mad. I am willing to share. In these late Holocene,

dread-packed days, where far too many are suffering,

where I have built a house on what was once your field,

I only pray: May the pest trucks pass you by. May the river

of chemicals slow to a trickle and instead may your

saucer-eared family drink from a clear stream of water pouring

over rock while a nontoxic breeze combs through the trees,

and may we both thrive in the truly wild once again.