• jordanlund@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      The Country
      Billy Collins

      I wondered about you
      when you told me never to leave
      a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
      lying around the house because the mice

      might get into them and start a fire.
      But your face was absolutely straight
      when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
      where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

      Who could sleep that night?
      Who could whisk away the thought
      of the one unlikely mouse
      padding along a cold water pipe

      behind the floral wallpaper
      gripping a single wooden match
      between the needles of his teeth?
      Who could not see him rounding a corner,

      the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
      the sudden flare, and the creature
      for one bright, shining moment
      suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

      now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
      in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
      illuminating some ancient night.
      Who could fail to notice,

      lit up in the blazing insulation,
      the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
      of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
      of what once was your house in the country?