In response to a poem that unsettled me.

Yesterday, I kept quiet
as a mouse inched

careful pink claws across
our kitchen floor.

I did not speak
or say Grand Canyon things

that forced doors open
into postcards. I left

gluttons of the grotesque
to the business of making noise,

peddling majesty.
And as the mouse came so close

to my toe, I did not lay
her small wonder at the hem

of a godd or a nation.
Instead, I watched the fur

on her flanks pulse fast.
And sped my breath

to meet the terror
of the tiniest.