This is one where he's particularly unmouse-like.
It's set in the free clinic in San Francisco.
At the free clinic, Ignatz snoozes
with his head down on the second hand classroom desk,
with his elbow on the part of it that curves around
to support his elbow so that he can shut
his eyes against the bend of his own arm,
with his cheek pressed against the laminated desktop
and his fingers just draping over the laminated plywood
edge.
That is the same edge that curves around
to dig slightly into his rib cage, which
is tilted so his lower spine stays in contact
with the molded contours of the glossy sea-green chair that
curves around to where his thighs begin and rises
slightly where his legs need to rise and rounds off gently
and ends just where his legs need to bend down to the floor.
So that if this is a lesson in how
something harder and something softer
can achieve a mutuality, if the harder thing has
a curvature that suggests an accommodating mindset,
and the softer thing is willing temporarily
to relinquish some measure of contingency
so the softer thing can partake of the rest for which
a location is thereby created and if a test were devised
on the subject of this lesson, then
what will be gained for one who took this test and passed it
or one who took this test and failed?