June 7, 1999     My Favorite Mouse
 

My favorite mouse scurries through the shop. Stops. I am thinking about
how soft it might be, but wait, and if I should set a trap. I guess there
is nothing here that she can ruin, or bother. She's looking at me. What
is she thinking about me? What can she think I might be thinking about
her? We sniff the air for each other's thoughts.

My favorite mouse. I was painting. black. I can see myself in the gloss.
I can see myself in the can. The brush goes into the can, into me and
comes out black. The black goes onto the metal, and it is blacker.

My favorite mouse is red like my lover's freshly dyed hair. I have this
feeling that the metaphor is not right. Is it not nice to say, "You have
hair the
color of a wild mouse?" Or is it not right because the mouse is nothing
like hair, the wrong texture and scale? But I have seen that color
before. When I
see the mouse, I remember a morning. I remember waking as the towel falls
off of a freshly showered head. I know that color.

My favorite mouse ferries four little red fur balls across the wide open
space. Each trip I see a little more;

What is that Mouse doing? Oh, she's moving her little ones. What is it
about wild animal babies that pulls at us. Why does my world freeze for a
second? Why can't i see anything but my favorite mouse with a baby in her
mouth?

Oh, she's taking them outside. Between the door, under the door, onto the
rocks, under the deck. How much farther does she go?

Here she comes back. My favorite Mouse. Up the vacuum hose, like a spiral
staircase. She can't live in there. There she is going down into the
scrap wood bucket, like it's a cave, or a recently collapsed building. Do
her children live in the basement?

Michael Stipe is singing about the flowers of Guatemala. My favorite
mouse doesn't want her children hearing such things i suppose. What will
they think when they hear that the people are colorful and bright and
the flowers often bloom at night?

My favorite mouse knows that i am watching. Her last trip out, back to
her children and new home, she takes a different route. I wonder how well
she knows the vacuum-hose ladders and fallen-skyscraper wood piles of my
workspace. How well does she know what I am thinking?