The gerbil eyed me
from the jar.
He was upside down
- or I was.
His tail was very long
and stuck out of the glass jar
a long way.

His nose was long.
Pink were his little hands and feet
and none of these could get a grasp on his
new glass confines.
His eyes were warm and brown,
his coat a sandy color like the desert
where he burrowed.

The glass jar was an improvisation.
He arrived upside down
dangling by the tail,
handed over by my Arab students.
A desert-rat
to commemorate Desert Storm.

His situation in the jar
was precarious and temporary
and since I had no better home,
and no idea what he ate,
I quietly released him
to the desert’s noonday heat.