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Sunday, April 3, 2011

The Poetry Ark

Titus gave us an animal theme for the bus today, and I really really meant to cook something up from the GeckoPantherKingfisherRingtailedLemur, DolphinBushbabyArcherfish Harrier list. I tried not to write about cats, AGAIN, truly! But they are everpresent. So here you are. . . House Mouse
It drives her crazy she hears it squeaking, rushes forth from the porch but it is already gone. Resting in the garden, she hears it again and bounds to the spot. but it is gone in a quiver of whiskers and a whisk of tail. It has left behind a small, black pellet To mock her. She waits a day, and a night, glued to the spot staring intently at the crack between the steps She hears it moving about, making its downy bed, counting its hundred seeds. She takes a break for the catfoodbowl, out of the rain. And there it is again! Running from the dustbin, its cheeky ears pert and crisp But she is foiled Foiled! by the closed window. She knocks the orchid over in agitation. She will have it one day, the mouse under the stairs
. . . Join in the Poetry Bus over here! and I'm very sorry about the run-on text, but Blogger is having another of it's no-hard-return days and simply does not care about paragraphs.

19 comments:

Helen said...

Oh how I loved this! I remember my daddy armed with a broom sitting up most of the night just waiting for that pesky mouse to make an appearance! He DID get it!

Niamh B said...

Love that word Foiled! fun trip!

Titus said...

Cracking! Loved the black pellet 'To mock her.', the hundred seeds and yes, that Foiled!

If I could have it in the book, that would be grand. Perhaps e-mail me if that's OK, and with a line-breaks version? Kind of works as a prose poem, though.
Titusmckay@aolDOTcom

Emerging Writer said...

I too love the black pellet. I can see the expression on her face

Peter Goulding said...

Yes, my blog is doing the prose thing too. No idea how I got it to work.
Me, I'm up for the mouse...

The Bug said...

Poor cat - but so very funny :) I love it!

shabby girl said...

YES! SHE WILL HAVE THIS!!! Eventually, she will have her day!

I used to watch the dogs cocking their heads at the ground, listening to whatever was down under. I might not always have seen them "get them", but I think they did eventually!

Louise said...

Really, really enjoyed this loads.

Argent said...

This was very visual and a piece with a cat in it is always welcome to me.

Doctor FTSE said...

I don't think the missing line breaks make all that much difference to the way the piece reads.

Jinksy said...

Cat and Mouse like Tom and Jerry?! LOL

Lucy Westenra said...

If you continue to have line break trouble, try composing directly into the "edit html" pane rather than the "compose" pane.(I mean it!) Where you want a line break include a
tag. NOTE This tag does not need a closing tag.
If this works you can then use the compose pane editor to select typeface, text color etc.
Good luck.

Lucy Westenra said...

Oh DAMN! In my previous comment, Bloody Blogger has interpreted my exemplar line break tag as just that. SO there's a line break after "include a" Wouldn't you just know!
The tag you need to include is "br" but ENCLOSED IN ANGLE BRACKETS and not the quote marks that I have used here.

NanU said...

that's an awful lot of messing around just for a line break. Blogger _used_ to work as a simple text editor - why did they bother to unfix this?

Kat Mortensen said...

Oh, you have caught the experience so well! Cats embody vigilance, don't they?

Kat

shabby girl said...

I was right there with her! Loved it!

MuseSwings said...

I'm glad you chose the cat for your poem - and that mouse with the "cheeky ears". I enjoyed sitting on the grass - next to the toppled orchid cheering on the cat.

Lolamouse said...

I think that mouse has been visiting my house as well! It gets around! Perhaps we should put a price on its little head...

Enchanted Oak said...

This is the best cat poem I've ever read, NanU. I loved every line and heard the poetry clearly even without line breaks.
Speaking of which, I'm having the same problem. All of a sudden, a couple of posts ago. It's torturous!