Poem by Wendell Hawken

Don’t do that!
He had heard
drowning peaceful
but now can say—
having been pinned
under a golf cart
in pond muck,
rescuers splashing,
his limbs unmoving,
lungs filling
with scum—
it is not.
Told of
a glue-stuck scrum 
mice held alive
by foot or tail,
how one mouse
fixed his eyes on his,
sentient to sentient,
as my son slipped
the glue-board
into the water bucket.
Said that one mouse
flashed in his mind
when he was
immobile
pinned in the pond.