Ian Bell
yesterday I drowned a rat, or rather
failed to rescue it from the rain barrel
when that is the singular thing it needed.
had it been a mouse, say, or a shrew, a vole,
a seriously misdirected mole, any rodent
cousin with anxious paws like a little
brown widow who’d lost her handbag, fine,
then I’d not have hesitated to offer it a twig;
but not a damned big rat, there I draw the line.
in school biology we’d opened one with a
scalpel and I’d looked among the damp
glistening coils for some part of it to blame
for the Great Plagues, the pestering of flesh
from corpses in Wars, the scaly tail looking
like the pickpocket implement of someone
who rigs races, sells stolen cars, takes good
watches off drunks in bars; then puzzled
all night about which part of me harbored
such callousness. Had places been reversed,
my thin-toed feet scrambling useless on a
course of sinking leaves, would any rat have
cared to look in me, for an organ of remorse?
IAN BELL is a Durban born and raised doctor, who retired recently after a 32 year career spent mostly in the practice of Emergency Medicine here and abroad. His memoir entitled Postcards from Accidents & Emergencies is currently in the hands of publishers, who, if they don’t stop dithering about it, may soon find themselves missing vital anatomical parts. He is a musician with the trio Thr3 Point Landing (to be seen on YouTube) who play old Ragtime and Blues material. With Douglas Livingstone as a surrogate Dad and mentor in his youth, he has made attempts at poetry since an early age, but to everyone’s enduring gratitude he has done little about getting this published. This may change.
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