are mice who went wrong
way back but flapped about, cutting
and pasting, adding and taking
away, until they got it right, so now
any mistake’s no big deal as they
do things their own way, sleeping
all day in attic and eave, coming
alive at dusk, intense morphemes in a
vast sentence to feel and feed
off the dark, make sense of night,
returning at dawn to tie up to
the same spot, dig in claws, wrapped
in wings, settle down beside us,
and we might not know they’re there.
Published in the September 2022 issue: View Contents