The muskrat has eaten every one of the water reeds.
I’ve seen him only once, slipping under the dock.
The summer clouds were shifting. I went inside, then,
to lay my eyes on my possessions. My things,
I knew their names. I don’t know the muskrat’s name,
yet he was nibbling around the edges of my life,
pulling threads into his den, working his jaws. He may
be a she. She may be making more muskrats. She may
be making so many burrows that the shore will crumble
into the lake. I have been steadfast, haven’t I? Yet
there is this loss. I had a dream that I was trying to get
the children to school. It was late. I was on my bike
and Kelly was on roller skates, holding on behind.
We coasted so fast we ended up in New York City.
Then we were really lost. We entered an Iranian embassy.
When I woke up, there was still this residual
responsibility, this weight. What can I say? The muskrat
has her song I can’t hear. Or, I’m indifferent to it
in the way siblings at the dinner table just eat, or kick
each other under the table. A muskrat goes by,
edges along the water with her yearning, and later
appears in the mind, a slippage with a tail.
Think about it. And the water was singing in that voice
it has when it wishes to disguise itself as sloshing,
when you have to listen through the sloshing for how
the singing breaks against the rocks.