For one thing:

you just don’t know what you might see on the top of the parking lot retaining wall,
behind Victor Allen’s next to Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I repeat, you just don’t know.

For another thing:

even though field mice and squirrels and chipmunks and cotton-tails are prey and as such lack time to devote

musing on passing wonders such as moments above grade,
being busy avoiding those who would make them
the “food” in “food chain;”

maybe just
maybe they are happier than us.

Because when they look up from paths sheltered in strings of brown-dry grass, where they bolt between refuge and peril, hugging the earth for warmth and protection,
what they see is this:

life bending back toward the wise ear of Home, and life swaying upward toward Solace.