the muskrat
after Marianne Moore
The muskrat,
“having all the best qualities
of the beaver but with
infinitely more charm”,
swims from bank
to bank of
likely water sources in search
for the best burrow place
he can provide his wife,
propelled by
webbed feet and
directed by the flattened scale–
bound rudder of his tail
which extends half his length.
The muskrat,
eager pro–
creator, is monogamous,
defends his family
by small underwater
entrances
into their
hovel, like the pangolin saves
his long claws for digging.
Like the pangolin he
seals his ears:
he against
the waters which he swims beneath
nearly twenty minutes
not needing new air, nor
noticed by
expectant
wake-watchful coyotes. “A sail–
boat was the first machine”,
invented when a mast
and canvas
were propped up
perpendicular to a raft
too long adrift. The musk–
rat is content to feed
from floating
platforms he
constructs without direction, like
his pushup hut when he
must build it above ground,
from offshoots
of the same
green stuff he eats. This Catholic fish
succeeds where many breeds
cannnot, protected from
sulfurous
waters by
a stubbornness which he mistakes
for grace, pursued, evades
his predators by his
industry.
Architect
and contractor, designer, he
receives the spring deluge
with equanimity
and prepares
to build a–
new. From wetland floor or shallow
streambed he brings up mud
with which he will refound
his house: mud
in which he
leaves the temporary pattern
of his twilit working
hours as he paces
back and forth
tail behind
him, night before, and contemplates
the inconsistent waves
that lap across his small
steady track.