A congressman a little south wants to remove a beach mouse 

from the endangered species list. The man calls it a rat, says 

 

he’d rather have a snake in his yard, says it costs too much 

for beach front developers to study and wait and build around

 

this thing, but imagine the mouse, long as a summer dandelion,

warm in your palm. Imagine its whiskers sugared with sand

 

like concrete dust from a new foundation, a fifteen story luxury

hotel with bay views. It’s not a useful creature. Not a baker 

 

of bread for eating or a knitter of soft woolen socks, not a minter 

of quarters or dimes: it’s no use, but neither am I most days, 

 

nor the things I love. Or what about my daughter, who claims 

she found a shark tooth washing in the Gulf Shores surf?

 

It’s a broken shell, but she keeps it in a jar safe  with small brass 

dolphin studs, her favorite pair of earrings though she wept a little when

 

we saw none last year. She reminds me she’s only been to the beach once. 

The time in my body seven months pregnant doesn’t count, but I count it: 

 

wading through seaweed to float my heavy belly I mirrored the sky. 

Sometimes it is okay to simply exist in a place. A few years before 

 

and pregnant the first time, I stepped over a scorpion, tiny brown 

shadow in my office carpet. It was winter and still, maybe cold.

 

Like an early Christmas gift, the men I worked with mobbed around it 

and crushed it, showed it to me on a scrap of paper and waited for thanks

 

but it stuck like a seed in the back of my throat. I worried about so much 

in those days: microwaving deli ham and drinking at least 64 ounces

 

 of water a day, counting kicks each hour. Even then I don’t think

I would have been able to step on the body as they did with ease.