To a Poet
I won’t be thanked for this, but I thought of you
that evening I was woken by the rat;
its scuttle – stop – and scuttle, mirroring
your cautious step; and then, its endless clawing
at the floorboards like your sailor life
spent carving out your calendar of shipwreck.
But more than this it was its human hands,
how it gnawed small pieces off the darkness.
