You’re Not Welcome My Friend

 You’re Not Welcome My Friend

 

A mouse scurried into my house

Under my bed it settled its head

 

‘Tis a stranger you are and not welcome here’

Go before the hangman traps snaps  your  neck  I said

 

Soon you will swing ‘neth a bright harvest moon

Be no more. Go; defy your fate I cried

 

Not a beat did the thing heed

Feasting on cheddar it ignored my pleas

I sighed .You have been warned

 

The resounding snap of the guillotine trap sounded

I caught its lifeless body by its tail

Removed it from the trap

Left it by the light of the moon

To join the food line of life

 

‘Tis a stranger you are and not welcome here

Soon you will swing ‘neth the bright harvest

Moon I warned.

Number two had come.  I sighed afraid to look

He’d be no more, He’d sealed his fate

 

Berating  his foolishness I stuck my head beneath my bed

Hoping he’d fled before losing his head

His little legs splayed, he met

My open mouth gaze

 

He wasn’t dead!

With a squeeze of his neck

He freed himself from the hangman’s steel

 

‘Tis a strange one you are indeed

And not welcome here I yelled

Soon you will swing ‘neth the bright harvest moon.

Be no more, like those gone before.

Go!  Second chance,

Little one – Scram! –  Be gone!

 

As he met my gaze he gorged on the cheese

Made his whiskers dance a reel

Then hitched up his throat

And breathed words up my nose

 

The hangman’s art outsmarted now

He grinned – the cheese

My hearth this night will grace

A fine meal for my brothers nine

 

I nodded. He was a strange one indeed.

My assent I could not withhold

Go, I urgently declared

Beneath the bright moon you will not swing

Enjoy the cheese  Feed the other nine

Keep them away from the hangman’s ring of steel

My furry friend

Tis a stranger less you are around here now

Come back and visit again – sometime

Don’t bring the other nine

GC Hill 2018