The Country Mouse

was considering a visit to his cousin
in the city,
so he googled the train-times.
Distracted by a note on the site
that warned of possible leaves on the track,
he thought of the uncertainty principle
he had learnt at school,
that day he was chased home
by Schrodinger’s cat.

It being a dull autumn day
he decided to spend the time,
before the train,
browsing through his butterfly album,
humbled by the thought
that just one flap
of those air-spun wings
could cause a tornado in Texas
and how, on bright summer days,
their blinking motion could twist
the family cat into a gordian knot.

Using three containers of different size
he poured precisely one pint of milk,
put it in a flask,
cut a perfect cube of cheese
and wrapped it in seamless paper
for the trip. It got him thinking
of power and possibility
and how just one tooth-print
in the cheese
could claim the whole block.

He considered two routes
to the station, the first shorter but uphill
so chose the second, a straight line
between two points,
conveniently called A and B.
He arrived at the station
to find it surprisingly empty
and there, standing nervously
on the far side of the platform,
a chicken, a fox and a bushel of wheat.

The seventh son of a seventh son, Maurice Devitt was abandoned by his evil stepmother and raised in the forest by a poet.