Self-Portrait: Winter Landscape, 1997

through cracks in the stone foundation
entered drafts of air and mice
I could not bring myself to kill
so trapped them
in translucent boxes with a door
that swung only one way in
not meaning to but terrorizing
them quickly dehydrating
their small bodies ’til I heard
frenzied scratching and hurried
to free them to the frozen fields
from which soon enough
they’d run back reentering
the warm cellar before
creeping up to the kitchen larder
and we’d begin again
all that winter as the house
seeped into me its damp
a feeling like the mucky pond
beyond the bay window
in front of which I often sat
watching accumulating branches
fallen leaves scumming its surface
imagining what lay beneath
the filmy water were fish
swimming in ever slower circles
hovering under rocks and moss
skimming the tarn floor
while in the air above us all
icy clouds interred the sun