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Cake day: July 30th, 2023

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  • The Country
    Billy Collins

    I wondered about you
    when you told me never to leave
    a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
    lying around the house because the mice

    might get into them and start a fire.
    But your face was absolutely straight
    when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
    where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

    Who could sleep that night?
    Who could whisk away the thought
    of the one unlikely mouse
    padding along a cold water pipe

    behind the floral wallpaper
    gripping a single wooden match
    between the needles of his teeth?
    Who could not see him rounding a corner,

    the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
    the sudden flare, and the creature
    for one bright, shining moment
    suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

    now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
    in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
    illuminating some ancient night.
    Who could fail to notice,

    lit up in the blazing insulation,
    the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
    of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
    of what once was your house in the country?