Rattus (poem)

Rattus

Intuition, extra sense, if you like

Déjà-vu in a prototypic vermin mind

We are having telepathic conversation

Embracing sight’s elusive romance

(To be a genius. To be not at fault for this.)

How are we going to solve a problem?

Working backwards from the outcome

The treat is hidden in the maze

We flash a picture and map the brain’s

Response…now every day for weeks

Rattus follows a rat’s routine

And if he were a little man, in workaday jeans

We would astonish him

A prescient rat

He would begin to take a foolish pride

Preen on himself, a gifted rat

An oracular, omniscient rat

A tightrope walker over a gorge of teeming

Alternative realities

Infected with the certainty of vision

He bumps his snout and rises on his hind legs

Rattus

Peeled

(2017, Stephanie Foster)