The Mouse

It’s okay for the flag you wave

to make no sense

or for the universe to stop

for the twitched whiskers

of a mouse. 

It’s okay to write your love letters

in water with an idle finger.

It’s okay to draw a blank.

Sometimes we wish we were robots

or Mozart

or the Great Wall of China.

Of course we do

but late at night

our bodies are so narrow

that we must not ever be loved.

Where is the universe then

as the timbers moan and

our windows fill with rain?

Where is that child

who could lift us so high

in our own strong hands?

In the day, our bodies

collect iron ore from

sulphurous depths.

We drink the boiling ocean

eat handfuls of the sky.

We are Eleanor Rigby and Dick Turpin,

separately hunting

the same Bengal man-eater.

It’s okay.

It’s okay

sometimes 

for a clever mouse to turn

to the swollen, howling sky

and say

‘Sometimes it’s okay to stop’.

We all need more than we have when it comes to love.