! Hickory, Dickory, Deconstructed Dock... Poem by Michael Shepherd

and the maker of the case
had given it rudimentary legs
with a little space between them and the floor
and though the case was of finest polished
hickory-wood, he’d not given much valued time
to the cheap wood of the interior shelf
below the shining weight swinging to and fro
on the pendulum..

you don’t often catch a mouse climbing;
but the philosophy of all scavengers large and small
is ‘you never know…’ – the floor is the first place, but
the table top may hold hidden treasure
on its fertile plain; and though this strange
upright monster of furniture didn’t seem
promising to a twitching whiskered nose,
you never know… Though the gentlemice
are the family’s scavengers in chief, the ladymouse
can be desperate with all those little mouths to feed…

we’ll never know whether it was a scrabble
up the rough side of that hickory-wood case, or
cunning deft paws thrust between the links of chain…
she gained the top shelf, where the strange mechanism
moved as discreetly as a mouse, above the ticking cogwheel…

and then, like some mighty god of fearsome justice and revenge, offended at this presumption…this hubris,
to be punished, as Prometheus, as Icarus –
a whirring of the metal monster
shook the case and mouse; then – a sonic boom,
shattering Minnie’s ears – but more, shattering
her tidy universe, at exactly one-o-clock in Green Witch time…

one tiny, traumatised ladymouse –
the childmice fed and put to bed -
snuggled close to her gentlespouse that night:
‘what’s it all about, Mickey? ’ who
yawning, half-awake: ‘Search me, kid…’

she, laying awake that night, filled with more curiosity
than it needs to kill a cat; filled with unmousely thought
(by which that godly evolution works its mysterious metamorphoses…)
wishing ‘even if I were reborn as
the most timid human being, I’d like to know
what it’s all about…’ and too much cheese
tossed her sleep between harsh nightmare dreams…

* *


… she may work in your office, or the firm’s up there
above the factory floor.. that tiny spinster of uncertain age,
large round eyes behind small round wire-rimmed glasses,
eyes which however seldom meet your gaze…
water-cooler gossip, calling her Miss Mouse,
idly wonders where she goes
and what she does, at end of day…
back, we guess, to an ailing widowed mother who
resents her daughter going out to work,
but knows the money must be earned…

then, mother put to bed, she reads (and yes,
Beatrix Potter’s on the shelf above,
next to the clock her father made for her…) :
scared of mice, of course, yet
feeling a strange affinity; remembering
as daughters do, her beloved father
whose clockmaker's posture, back bent,
arms and hands ready for his intricate work,
she has inherited, as she holds her Beatrix Potter
cocoa mug between her delicate,
timid, pink, deft, humble yet
secret-strong, little paws…