This post is provided by Mariner’s wife. All her life she has been a poet extraordinaire. She has the skill to express insight and create association but at the same time her poems dig deep into the reader, leaving some thoughts to conjure.

Many times mariner has encouraged her to publish; she would be successful. She has won a few poetry contests and can dash off another poem in the snap of a finger. One time we were driving down a road when we saw a roadkill raccoon lying by the edge of the road. Within five minutes she had penned a poem asking whether the raccoon deserved a requiem.

The poem below was written after we caught a mouse in the basement that had broken into a bag of sunflower seed. You will enjoy the complexity.

Leavings

I sweep up the leavings of sunflower seeds

left behind by a mouse

whose fate was snapped like its neck

in a trap that I had set.

I am glad that he had the thrill of satiety

when he found the bag of sunflower seeds

He was a millionaire among mice

in that moment of his big find.

I am glad that he did not know

his life would be cut short because of it.

Surely in that last moment there was no time for fear

And that snap too quick for pain.

He had perhaps the best that life can offer

in a little life–the warmth of a basement in winter

an endless pile of food, a quick and merciful death.

Or do I deceive myself?

His was not a little life, no smaller than my own.

Like me, he wanted more than comfort, warmth and food

He sought those things because they brought him more life

And more life was what I deprived him of.

MKM     1-19-19