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Viv Apple

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Growing up

How small I was the day I learned the truth,
at barely three I didn’t know the score;
wrapped in the limitations of my youth

I cried for my grazed knee, but nothing more.
And even as we fled, mother and me,
away from London’s first taste of The War

some ninety miles where it was safe to be,
I felt no doubts as fields sped past the train
and cows aroused my curiosity.

Wider horizons edged my new terrain
until that morning when I saw it there,
lifeless and still: a dead mouse in the lane.

I stopped: my senses frozen to a stare.
It lay intact with tiny, perfect paws
and in that moment I became aware

of death, although it had no name or cause
but sudden sadness and an unknown pain,
and fear transcending all of Nature’s laws.

For all I’ve lost and loved and lost again,
and lessons from the years since I was three,
I still see now the dead mouse in the lane

that gave to me the power of empathy.

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