My Poem: Mice and Ghosts by Lawrence Norris

Mice come into the house from cold fall air
and haunt my kitchen until I set traps for them.
My neighbor tells me they must make a home
out in the old pile of logs where the rabbits go.


But there's something spiritual in my wood pile
it holds relics of my old apple tree
and I can't bring myself to get rid of the logs
summer home of mice and hiding place for rabbits.

But like all dead things I hold onto,  it brings trouble,
memories of mistakes I have made that sneak up
and cry out on these cloudy winter days
scolding me for what I failed to do in summer.

So on these cold mornings when nothing is warm
and even the squirrels won't come out of their nests,
I sometimes battle ghosts stuck in my head
like mice that come in from the cold, haunting my kitchen.

Copyright 2017, Sporting Chance Press

Norris is the author of The Brown and White, a fictionalized memoir published by Sporting Chance Press about a young man's freshman year at the late 1960s in Chicago. It's about changing neighborhoods and challenges, but humorous and positive as well.