Four O'clock Mouse Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Come down to my office to check emails
Having wakened from a dead-tired sleep
And gathered myself in the quiet deep dark
Of the something between mid-night and
The early hours and made a cup of tea
And settled to the heavy black and its streetlight stars

Minds-eye awakening, I'm startled by a small rapid shadow
That flicks across the backdrop of the corridor behind
And turn to see a mouse - brought in no doubt
By the cats as a plaything - and now run down,
Its clockwork sending it in circles hither and thither,
A small lost heart beset by vast terrors.

So I rise and move carefully to the bathroom,
Avoiding menacing a shadow where it crouches,
Taking up a towel that I cast like a fisherman
And then gather swiftly and tuck beneath my catch
Bundling on my small disciple lest it burrow and slip
Thankfully shaking it safely on to the balcony

My expectation is that it will start up and dart into the bushland
But there is no movement, only the form of a mouse
That lies dreadfully inert with its tiny limbs limp
In the half-light through the shadows of my window
And slowly I realize that I have witnessed the very last moment
When a presence is lost in the boundless stillness.