Hope is a Thing With Mice

Monday Morning Musing

Good morning everyone. Time for a brief update and maybe a few haiku. Last night I was reading a book about the early masters of haiku. According to an old legend one of them, Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) wrote 23,500 verses in a day. Can you imagine writing almost a thousand verses in an hour – using Japanese characters? Legend is a wonderful thing.

Would any of those be of sterling quality? (STERLING being the Ragtag Daily Prompt word this morning.) I was inspired to do a few myself, but for sure mine aren’t very sterling. It’s not hard to dash off words, but it takes me time to write something that will even make sense.

winter nipping
a mouse squeezes into the warmth
heaven or hell?

When the winds blow cold and there’s a nip in the air, hopeful mice are wont to creep into houses, hoping to find a cozy home for the winter months, hopefully with a food source not too far away–like a bowl of cat food on the floor. Last Friday I was sitting in my recliner reading, while my black cat dozed contentedly on my lap. Glancing up, I spotted one such hopeful mouse creep out from under our wood stove sitting in the corner of our living room. We have poison set out, but this must be a clever mouse.

brave mouse scurries
under my wood stove
wee Napoleon.

“Mouse, Angus! Mouse,” I screeched, and the mouse quickly disappeared. Angus opened his eyes and gave me a “What are you on about?” look. It didn’t take long, though, before both of our cats caught on about those little mouse feet scrabbling on the stones. I’ve moved the cat food elsewhere and our cats spend time by the wood stove these days, hoping for a Waterloo.

Fresh Snow

Winds are definitely whipping and winter is nipping today. After a mild spell most of last week, the temp dropped yesterday evening and a north wind picked up. Snowflakes were falling by the time we left church, just before 9 pm, and before long we had the makings of a storm. Fine flakes blew through the air all night; we’ve a nice amount this morning and more is falling as I write this.

“Hope is a thing with feathers…” In this case sparrows hoping for a few grains have found a bare spot on our driveway somewhat out of the wind. Our sidewalk is blown in ankle-deep, I learned as I waded out a bit ago to scatter seed for them.

lame magpie
bullied by his own finds peace
among the sparrows

Poetry Reading

“Hope is a Thing With Feathers,” the famous poem by Angie Dickinson, was one of the verses read at our Poetry night Saturday evening. I was hoping for a bit larger crowd but, apart from the readers and their partners, only five others attended. Hopefully next time… Renaming it “Literary Night” might draw more interest. I read a mixture of my own poems and short stories myself.

Click here to read one of them.

So Tomorrow Will Be Twitter Tuesday?

Now that Black Friday sales are basically done, I received half a dozen ads this morning telling me that today is Cyber Monday. Can anyone explain that? No, never mind…

I’m hoping this will be a better week for me. I was pretty wiped out last week, not sick but very weary. Energy level 2/10 kind of thing. I suspect my white cell count is on the rise, but we’ll see how this week goes. Hope is a thing with energy… 🙂 I’ve another phone visit with my oncologist Dec 12, which should give me a better idea how things stand.

Speaking of energy, it’s our youngest grandson’s 12th birthday today.