Eulogy to the Rat in my Toilet

Swimming in my toilet bowl

Frantically trying to escape

You woke me from a dream

And made me cast about the darkness for a light

I killed you cruelly with my baseball bat

In the cold stillness of the early morning hours

After many attempts that cracked the bowl

I finally crushed your head

With one telling stroke

You fell lifeless back into the smelly water

An air bubble coming from your mouth

Your desperate struggle for survival was finally resolved

In favor of the bat

Your innocence was not in the toilet bowl

My guilt was not standing over it

It was not a moment for moral consternation

It was only a time for cold, cruel calculation

Of how best to strike with my instrument

And where to aim my bat

I suffer the indignity

Of pulling your carcass out with my hands

Still soft I drop you in the dustpan

And plop your wet body in a plastic bag

And heave it over the ledge outside

Into the bamboo thicket below

My repository for all odd cast-off things

Finally to lay forgotten wherever you land

Then I wash my hands as best I can and go back to sleep

Knowing you will not awaken me rudely

In the middle of the night

Ever again