Saturday, March 23, 2013

Mouse Dreams


The Country
by Billy Collins

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country? 

"The Country" by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses: Poems. © Random House, 2003

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Word for Today: obnubilate


obnubilate \ob-NOO-buh-leyt\, verb:

to cloud over; becloud; obscure.

...their trunks were black and knobbly, whilst their branches buckled over as a roof to meet a brick plane and obnubilate a view of the stars.
-- Colin Cornelius, Monkeys Can't Swim

It is the pity of the world, Dr Maturin, to see a man of your parts obnubilate his mind with the juice of the poppy.
-- Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius Command

Obnubilate, a late 16th century word, is a verbal derivative of the Latin nūbilus meaning "cloudy," though its closer ancestor, obnūbilāre means "to darken."