Dizzy loofah-tailed ginger rat
bounding suddenly through the Swabian morning
across a mossy garage roof, can it really
at last be you? This is our first ever
acquaintance, your British siblings
outmanoeuvred, outmuscled, infected, undone
by duller American second-cousins
and Mankind’s insistence on making spaghetti trifle.
Scurrying twig-shaking nut-chasing beastlet,
vivid and bristled as the London fox, as your
dwindling dwarfed Scottish
brothers in orangeness,
march, march, march in twitchy-nosed
squadrons of unbleachable nationalism
and snatch England sword aloft
back into your bilberry-stained elm-scratched claws,
proud Squirrel! Noble nibbling Tree-Rat!
Swarm back across our island in
uninfectable number, swiping hazelnuts
from the grasping teeth of the grey
virus, red slogans emblazoned
on your swelling hearts
in Gothic script.
