A ping of appearance,
while the world skids on.
I expect Wiley Coyote to turn up,
but it is only chipmunk,
a little mousy hot-rod, tuned-up
to outrun perception.
Yours is the trembling electric instant;
truly you are a light unto yourself.
Murine wisp with whiskers,
always thrilled by your own survival.
The dead-stop of your arrival,
blurs my ken, then you are gone
while I wallow in an after-image.
You and your speed affirming
racing-stripes, always aquiver
to dart away.
Run tiny animation of the wind, run!
This is a Burmese climbing rhyme. It needs work. But we have had so much snow, of course, I thought about snowbirds. Haha.
White world snowbird
Hunts lunch blurred under fluff
He heard the seed would be there
Bird didn’t have a prayer; the crow
What share could he give the corvine
Better the bovine give him the boot
Or murine play tag with that twitterer
Crows are for the birds
The best words I can tell you
Two-thirds of them are no good
The seed blew through ice crystals
It flew over the cuckoos nest.
There’s a mouse in my house,
a greedy little souse
He’s clever for I never
eyewitness his endeavors,
But the cat sentinel sat,
and I know the little rat
is there.
There are holes in my rolls
and mouse turds in my bowls.
Though a lover, out of cover,
of all fauna I discover
This critter makes me twitter
at his presence as a sitter
in my kitchen,
So I’m bitchin’; but the mouse,
tail a-twitchin’,
scurries on.
WHEN THE CAT’S AWAY
The murine stars
Hide timorously as the cat’s yellow eye
Appears early each morning
Trying to catch those tiny
Scurrying distant dwarfs
But they stay hidden until the cat
Settles down to sleep again
Vulpes vulpes stares
Wind whispers, a hunter’s pose
Murine meal under snow
for Debbie Guzzi's Animal Haiku Contest
Shawn Sackman (Northern CA)
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