Mouse in the Grocery

There are no bacon strips this morning
so a mouse ponders a pound of sugar.
A mouse wants what a mouse wants,
salt-cured pork instead of soluble carbs.
A mouse is like a heart: it sleeps in winter;
it knows uncertain love; it appears to have no gender.
Now this mouse regards a woman sprinkling water
on lettuce as a man pushes a broom up the aisle.
None of us knows what to expect out there.
Surely pain is to be part of it
and the unwelcome intrusion of the past,
like violent weather that makes a grim chiaroscuro
of the air before a curtain of rainwater falls.
I clutch my basket and push on.