When My Poems Go Somewhere Else
when I wake up early
four or five
to write a poem
instead go into the kitchen
to see if the glue trap
caught a mouse
two babies
tweeting like birds
and when I decide to free the mice
in the basement even though
there is a often the super's cat downstairs
and when I come upstairs
to listen, are there other mice?
and then coffee and emails
and a chapter in the book I'm editing
Doctrine of Exile in the Kabbalah
imagine those words
and then it is 11 and maybe
there is no poem.