The Importance Of Small Things Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The importance of the small things

Out of a crack at the foot of a wall, a tiny baby mouse
blinded by the brightness of this autumnal day
I picked up the new life and put it in the palm of my hand
sensing the warmth, the baby curled up and slept.
To think this tiny animal had a heart, lungs, liver and
so, just like me; living in a world too immense to
grasp other than an outline of space and time.
In less than a week, the baby mouse will be an adult
and since mice do not go for higher education, one
can assume it will not take an interest in the Binary
or no Binary aspect of the struggle to survive.
I put the infant back where it came out of the wall
and upset an Australian, the seller of the house who
hated vermin with a passion.
He claimed mice who came by boat to Australia with
prisoners from the British islands had no enemies
there and was free to breed, they did with a vengeance.
Once he had a farm in Victoria, he didn't give detail
about the location of the farm, only that an army of mice
and eaten his Vietnam pigs and many of his cats.
He sat fire to the dry grass outside the barn, trying to stop
the onslaught, but the fire also set his barn ablaze
his house took fire also, lost everything he did.
The insurers wouldn't pay him compensation because
of his stupidity; angrily, he condemned his countrymen
as vulgar beings.
The man from Australia took up trucking; for two
years crossed the mainland of Oceania killing mice if they
crossed the road.
Having saved up money and also won some monies
at the local lottery, he landed in Lisbon and spoke to a land agent
and bought a farm in Alentejo and specialized in
mule breading, that thrived when he was informed that
breeding mules entails horses and donkeys too.