Metanoia, While Walking To School Poem by Jacqui Thewless

I was struggling to find
links to the Things that were new
and coolly alien, originally: gifts
from the Unknown Word
God, including
my peculiar first
taste
of lentil soup and Scottish consonants,
aged six.

It was an awful difficult thing for an English kid
to put a face to the name
'sleekit'...
till
encountering a Vole,
picked up
and held by its tail,
while walking to school.

I found it, mind...
'timorous', as Burns said.
It never made the journey
in my hand:
just slipped
from its thin mouse-skin
into oblivion.