Rats

 
This is to honor the rat in this week’s news
from whose sacrificed heart in a Michigan lab
scientists cloned tissue to create a new heart
to implant and save another rat whose heart
had stopped beating completely then started
up again and is still going strong like you’d
expect a rat heart would go if sufficient human
effort went into its small as a match flame
survival while my father’s heart stopped cold.

This is to honor the rat big as a hedgehog
whose rodent tail wags like a dog’s
and whose garnet eyes tiny as stones
from a stolen pair of earrings peer at me
through the plate glass window while I
bike in place and stare out at the snow
burying itself white on white over the marsh 
like a beating heart keeping its own best pace.

This is to honor the rat I found in my kitchen
drawer in New York City scuttling across
the silverware while I was wearing nothing
but my skin, and the drunk who caught it,
let’s honor him too, how he whacked it
with a spatula and swept it into the dustpan,
down a flight of stairs, step by difficult
step, and wept as if he had swept himself
out onto the street and into the gutter,
this man with a poet’s sensitivity who’d
tear up at anything after a few drinks.

This is to honor the rat I took home
from my 4th grade class and named
Penelope who escaped her locked
cage in the hallway one morning
and found her way under my door
across the floor and up my bed where
I can still feel her nibbling my ear
as if it were a lettuce leaf.
 
This is to honor the rat we take for granted
always wriggling its way into our speech
when we rat someone out or say “I smell a rat”
or “You dirty rat” or claim not to give
a rat’s ass if we join the rat race or not,
order ratatouille, admit to feeling rattled,
or tell our husband his favorite old sweater
looks kind of ratty or just “rats” as in darn
or damn if I weren’t so mousy I’d leap out and
scare you so we could kiss and make up.