Sometimes Words Escape You

Your life has been so criminal,
It’s almost fortunate. Some words
Struggle like mice in the cat’s paw

Of your thoughts. Do you remember
Watching the actual cat play
With a remarkably bold mouse,

Once, outside a rented box house,
The mouse alternately feigning
Dead, then rushing straight at the cat,

And rearing up on its hind legs?
You kept thinking you should end it,
Drag the cat away, back inside,

As you would have, had a small bird
Been about to die. But this mouse,
It fascinated you. As if

You were watching a cliffhanger,
And you had to see it resolved.
And that crazed mouse, it got away,

Shimmied up a drainpipe and ran
Along gutters choked with pine straw,
Vanishing for good, while the cat

Twitched its tail and ran parallel
To the gutter a while, then looked
Back to you, as if you might help

Fetch the toy like you always did,
Throw it back into play, but you
Couldn’t this time, pleased and helpless.