Welsh Tidy Mouse

While many humans, Rodney, hanker to

Exterminate us mice, you have no fear

Long-whiskered creatures might invade chez vous.

Since you installed no mousetraps, Rodney, near

Home entry points, you made me welcome, so,

To show my gratitude, I cleared the mess

Inside your garden shed as quid pro quo.

Day after day, you let the bench regress.

Yet every morning after, I restore

My order, leaving you to wonder who

On earth can stand this mindless daily chore—

Us mice can, Rodney, clean-up’s what we do! …

Should humans not ban mousetraps from their house,

Enabling service from a tidy mouse?

 

Idler

Is Custard unwell? No, the crazy

Dude’s merely incredibly lazy—

Laid dead in his spot

Even though he is not

Ready yet to help push up a daisy!

 

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. His sonnet was prompted by the Washing Post story, “Mouse caught on camera cleaning a man’s shed, night after night.” His limerick was inspired by the Metro story, “‘Incredibly lazy’ horse named Custard keeps making people think he’s dead.”