Chicagoetry: Winter Mice

Winter Mice

The winter mice are reappearing,
As if they've been there all along, invisible,
Walking through walls,

Fatalistically determined like lemmings
Or salmon
To attain heaven.

Last season's traps remain, steadfast, solitary,
Positioned strategically in regular lanes
Of entry and exit,

Old wood-and-steel models aid sleek new black
Plastic ones.

The old, dried peanut butter baits
Will need to be refreshed;
Harder with the old traps but
Lessons have been learned.

My technique is now highly refined,

Having endured a learning curve with wood-and-steel:
You'll break a knuckle if you don't
Play your cards right and if you get

The cheapest ones, with the lame, plastic fake cheese
Release mechanisms,
They're worthless.

You get used to the insult
Of seeing the bait soon cleared
Without the trap springing. "Little fuckers!"

I wish I could welcome and nourish them,
Allow them to flourish, but alas, they might bring plague.
They make me feel anxious and unclean.

Sometimes at night I hear the metal ones snap
And know some little thing is suffering.
Every time I view such, I gasp aloud.

Sometimes I don't find them for a day or two, jumping
At the discovery (along with the gasp).
I pitch the entire apparatus - trap plus small, gray,

Lifeless body - into the trash.

The new black plastic models
Are easier to set up and just as effective
For the slaughter that looms,

A harvest of miniature regrets.

Last winter seemed a holocaust.
They just kept coming!
I would, too, if I were homeless

In winter
And could walk through walls.

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J.J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He welcomes your comments. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.

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