my mother took them to the river
with a packet of weetbix
their carousel that scampering
roundabout of who-am-I
their dense burrow smell
I could add them to the list
of things with which I never played
gifts from my wayward father
that were out of bounds
the idea of mouse a rumour
frantic in abandoned parts
she unlatched the cage and said
kids, you're on your own but they come back
these feral colonies
I could not tend
they come back
with their cold little paws
we've been away for such a long time they chant
they are the chorus of what could have been
when I was a child
story books were full of mice
their thin limbs poking from dimity smocks
and neat waistcoats
lost mice untraceable country cousins
that stretch of land by the river
it really was wild
a wasteland then
we lay in clumps of bamboo
and smoked our first cigarettes
bamboo bumsuckers
the lost mice clamoured inside
my headspins
the priests came down
to practice their golf
they gave us their soft Irish talk
glimpses of secular ankles
as they pulled up their cassocks
to wade into swampy land
we retrieved their lost golf balls
and with the rewards
bought more cigarettes
holy cigarettes
taboos were built into everything
that happened in the clumps
the other day
I went back for the mice
and saw a man sitting
on a fold-out chair
just at the edge
of where it used to be wild
he faced away from the view
towards the road
I wanted to pull over
and not exactly talk to him
just reclaim a little rank whiff
from the poshed-up frontage
there was something wrong
with the man
he seemed to be doing an imitation
of a man sitting in the sun
like me
the place was lost on him