Gerry LaFemina

Smoky Shrew

A rodent is a rodent, my mother would say
& by that she meant a rat is a rat.

She was talking about people, for sure, not
this shrew which runs away almost

before I see it, there along George’s Creek where
I walk some days near dusk, the light

ashen. My mother once called a neighbor
a smoky shrew & later apologized. In a world

full of antagonists, quickness is a necessity,
ditto fur the color of fallen leaves & dirt.

If I could pick one up, I imagine it would smell
richly of soil from the tunnels where it hides

from humans & foxes both, & also,
from a Northern saw-whet, which perches

in the nearby pines, calling too-too-too
as in, I too am hungry, I too must feed.

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Gerry LaFemina’s most recent book of poems AFTER THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE was released in 2023 from Stephen F. Austin University Press. His other books include THE PURSUIT: A MEDITATION ON HAPPINESS (CNF) and BABY STEPS IN DOOMSDAY PREPPING (prose poems). LaFemina teaches at Frostburg State University and in the low-residency MFA program at Carlow Univerisity, and fronts the four piece punk band, The Downstrokes.

 

Tile: Joris Hoefnagel, Plate 49: Marmot, Hamsters, Rat, Field Mouse, Shrew, and a Coatimundi, c. 1575/1580, Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington