Poem with a Rat in It
If you put salt on a slug, it dies. If you put sugar on it, it dies.
Only the birds are God-made for sure. With insects it’s hard to tell.
Every city-dweller is a chain-smoker. Every automobile
a license to kill. Car-carrying ocean vessels transport heavy cargo
over long distances by the thousands.
To curb a pest problem in your home, you might
want to put poison into the corners of your kitchen,
maybe next to food, some nothing
cabinet. You may get a rat or a mouse this way.
Its body slows down, its breathing, until it dies.
If you find one on the street that’s been poisoned,
cover it. Find a lone gardening glove nearby, or child’s sock. Don’t
cover its eyes. It has to be able to see the cars and people passing
so it knows it won’t be stepped on before it goes.
There are two ways I know of to load a car onto an ocean vessel.
The first is like a thousand rodents boarding the Ark. The other
is like a woman passing off an infant to a sister or cousin.
Clusters of cranes wait at ports off the coasts to do this.
