National Poetry Month: Day #6

In a poem called "Introduction to Poetry," former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins writes, "I say drop a mouse into a poem / and watch him probe his way out."
I took his advice and came up with this poem on April 1, 2003:

The Mouse Inside This Poem

The mouse inside this poem
is blind,
sad, suffering bastard,
tailless wonder
wandering
wondering
what cataclysm
brought him here
without his kin
who must be puzzling his absence
between them.

I'd reassure them
if I could
some how
some way
some day
they'll find themselves
together in some nursery
or Kindergarten,
but I don't think they'd understand
the complex, self-referential
paradigm.

So for now at least
they'll suffer uncertainty
like the rest
of us,
those other two and
the mouse inside this poem

©2003 L.A. Smith.