The morning oatmeal and headlines coalesce
like a prosthetic ear grafted to a mouse's back.
On TV, a double-decker bus bomb erupts
as a grackle crashes into the kitchen window
on a too windy day. Weather predictions
for hometowns past and present ticker-tape
across the screen: London’s trite fog conceals
all traces of adolescent love; Fairbanks freezes
the skin of a live-in-lover; the rain in Stillwater
glistens in the hair of infatuated students; damp
Columbus aggravates my ex-wife’s asthma;
and all forecast a seventy-five percent chance
of regret. Stray bits of orange juice pulp dangle
from the rim of my glass like medals
on a general’s starched dress coat.
Outside, where I wage my war with armies
of crab grass and dandelions, the cat carries
a robin under the rusting Christmas tree.
All summer the body count will mount,
but the dead will remain unidentified.
As the morning unfolds, Regis and Kelly
celebrate Trivial Pursuit’s 20th anniversary
while a man in Iowa whose ears were burned
off in the fires of Iraq waits patiently
until the mouse has heard enough.