The Lenders

Outside I watch them peek out from the stone walls,
posing for passerby storybook illustrators
who will capture their sweet and eager faces,
their valiant determination to avoid the evil hawks and the swift, silent owls,
their caution as our dog pokes her nose into their homes they've built and decorated
with birch bark tabletops and mirrors of mica,
bluets in a vase made from an acorn shell,
dinner served on bottle cap plates.

Outside I hear them cheep and yip when the blue jays spot them
as they're working up courage to leap like trapeze artists
from the rhododendron to the bird feeder.
When the dog's chain brings her to a threatening nearness.
I cheer for their getaway into the tree trunk,
or into the wood stack.
Yet this month,
they dart on cartoon speed legs
through the small crack by the garage door
into our house.

The Borrowers' sense of pleasure leaves me
as I realize
I am sharing our kitchen with rodents.
The dog's kibble is eaten from her bowl,
but not by the dog.
The scritching of her nails on the kitchen floor as I imagine her playing with her stuffed toys,
willing them to life,
gives me the sense that we are safe,
and then I realize with horror movie clarity,
the dog is not inside.

What are we catching today? asks the hardware man
who has rung up my annual poisons
for ants and voles.
Munitions.
The sticky ones, the house of horror get in can't get out ones, the snapping ones,
the poison buffet of cheese and raisins and peanut butter in a tantalizing array on each spring and wire.

I still imagine telling their sweet cute stories,
sharing their photo album memories through the year,
Their thanksgiving feast of jack-o-lantern's guts on the fence,
their peekaboo game as they watch me through the carved triangular eyeballs
while jamming seeds into their cheeks,
Their Independence Day celebrations with their picnic blankets laid out beside my strawberry patch, waiting for the sun to set on the evening before I've thought to harvest,
their kind deadheading of my tulips just as they prepare to open.

A memoir, perhaps,
because inside, under the sink,
the barbs and cauldrons and scaffolds are there
aimed
at their small, dimly lit entrance to our cleaning cabinet,
where their nighttime wild rumpus
will end.