Peripheral Vision

Dec 6 2017

It scurries along the baseboard,

as if lost in a maze

and feeling its way out.

I don't so much see the mouse, as sense it;

the distant rim of my retina

on continuous high-alert.

While my conscious mind

is distracted by the obvious;

the direct line of sight

spot-lit,

like jangling keys

before a giggling grasping infant.

So I wonder how much of the world

I've been missing.

Even more, how much of myself.

Of my body,

performing all its complex tasks

with such marvellous skill

unseen, unheard,

as if I were merely a passenger

along for the ride.

And even more, of my mind,

flattering itself I'm in control

when most of my brain does perfectly well,

unencumbered

by awareness

memory

sense of self.

A brief thaw

in a merciless winter

and the mice find their way in.

A new arrival, I think

as he pauses, eyes darting, looking completely lost,

then bolts, start/stop, across the living room floor

into open danger.

I can read his confusion, and fear.

His desperation

for a small dark place

the smell of kin

the calming touch of fur;

a cozy nest

hidden behind the sheet-rock.

Where a mother is grooming her pups;

tiny hearts fluttering,

pink

          ...and warm

                                 ...and sightless.

I experience a real sense of violation when I find mice inside. But I'm getting used to it. Even though they threaten the comforting division between in, and out; between the predictably domestic, and the contingently wild. My house no longer feels like my impregnable castle.

I'm impressed by how infallible my peripheral vision is. How I don't see, but experience the same absolute certainty of sight. I'm almost thrilled by the survival skill of both my unconscious mind and my primitive faculties.

I think the poem does three things.

It recalls a true experience.

It flirts with a philosophical discourse on the nature of consciousness. I say “flirts”, because anything more would be better suited to essay than poem.

And it alludes to the commonality of all living things – reading his state of mind as automatically as I read his furtive movement. And among all living things, mostly mammals. And especially those to whom we're closely related; which, unlikely as it seems, very much includes mice.