The space between

Tonight I heard again the rat in the roof,

Fidgeting stuff about with a dry scuff,

Pausing in silence, then scratching away

Above my head, above the ceiling’s thin

Skin that separates his life from mine.

So shall I let him be, roaming so narrowly

In a few finger-widths of carpentry?

The evening passes by. I sit and write

And hear him skittering here and there in flight

From nothing. Maybe he hears

My scratching pen, my intermittent cough,

Below the frail thin lath that keeps me off

From harming him, as it too keeps him there,

Heard but unseen in narrow strips of air.