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<\/p>\nThere’s a feisty little fellow and his name is Max E Mouse
\nHe’s the head of a large family in a public basement house
\nTheir Underground abode is not a place to wine and dine
\nIn Elephant and Castle on the southbound Northern Line
\nIt’s dirty, dark and draughty causing permanent bronchitis
\nAnd Max could write a book about his chronic laryngitis
\nThey’ve never seen the daylight, as they cannot climb the stair
\nThey know there must be more to life than a dungeon in “la gare”
\nTheir numbers are increasing with every passing week
\nAnd a head-count of the inmates reached a recent record peak
\nThe punters on the platform can no longer have a smoke
\nSo Max & Co are not exposed to fumes that make them choke
\nAnd a head-count of the inmates reached a recent record peak
\nThey only have each other underneath the railway tracks
\nWith millions of on-lookers as they poke around for snacks
\nTheir food supply is scanty, based on intermittent charity
\nA crumb, a crisp, a morsel thrown with nonchalance and disparity
\nTheir primitive ablutions is another sorry story
\nBut what’s the odds, it won’t improve, the stench is mandatory
\nCommuters come, commuters go, they all enjoy an ogle
\nThe colony has open house – it’s enough to make one boggle
\nNow God’s great beasts in zoos and circus charge a hefty fee
\nBut Max excels in every show and even does it free.
\nHowever, Max, has other plans – he’s learnt it from his masters
\nThe global soul is beckoning him to cleaner, greener pastures
\nHe wants to relocate to some more natural habitat
\nWhere his life takes on the format of a mouse and not a rat
\nWhere stress and strain of city life’s no longer his scenario
\nAnd Max can play the country squire, the lord, the impresario
\nWith super-rodent energy, he took a leap one morning
\nAnd landed in the basket of a lady who stood yawning
\nQuite unaware of little Max she went on with her journey
\nHer office was near Marble Arch where she worked for an attorney
\nNow little Max lay thinking of his life’s new evolution
\nWhile all around him he’s aware of a Cultural Revolution
\nHer basket was his haven and her apple was his brunch
\nMidday she took the basket off to Hyde Park for her lunch
\nHardly had she got there, than she put the basket down
\nNext to her favourite park bench on a grassy piece of ground
\nWith pounding heart, Max ventured out and fled away in exile
\nHis nerves were frayed, his legs were weak, in fact extremely fragile<\/p>\n
Before too long, the sun went in and big, black clouds appeared
\nLarge drops of rain came splashing down, for Max it was most weird
\nOur little grey-haired squeaker had never had a proper shower
\nWhat started out as playful was a pest within an hour
\nHis grey fur got so heavy as the water penetrated
\nAnd his feet sank through the grass below as if they had been weighted
\nHis little body shivered and he knew he’d start to freeze
\nHis throat went dry, his nose did run and he began to sneeze
\nInitial signs of homesickness and pangs of lamentation
\nSwept through his soul and made him wish he hadn’t left his station
\nHe thought of his dear children who he’d left behind that morning
\nHe’d let them down and run away without a single warning
\nHe bitterly regretted now his hasty disappearance
\nAnd wished he’d stayed and stuck it out with stoic perseverance
\nBefore too long the rain dried up and everything turned sunny
\nAnd Max cheered up – in retrospect he found it rather funny
\nThen life is what you make of it, the prospects can improve
\nYou only need to change your chips – break out from your grey groove
\nAll things were bright and beautiful that lovely April day
\nMax revelled in the fruits of life – his longed for breakaway
\nThere were hoards of picnic leftovers and plenty of diversions
\nThey compensated richly for the trivial aversions
\nSo, whilst he contemplated how he’d love to find a friend
\nHe met a little colleague who’d nearly met a bitter end
\nThey called him one-armed Willy – cos he spent all day a-hopping
\nHe’d hitched a lift on a dustcart on its way from Upper Wapping
\nNow Willy was a valiant chap, he filled Max’s heart with hopes
\nHe promised to take care of him and show him all the ropes<\/p>\n
The moral of this story is a complicated issue
\nWhile travelling on the Underground and you need to find a tissue
\nBe sure to shut your bag and hold it tight at every station
\nThus, preventing gross resettlement of the local population
\nOr you may be instrumental in an unintended way
\nOf absconding with a family-man in the blatant light of day
\nAnd so it was that Max resolved to start his life anew
\nConfront the future like a man – and launch his own d\u00e9but
\nHe may not meet his kinfolks in this earthly life again
\nBut they’ll reunite in heaven in a celestial refrain
\nWhere pint-sized mice and elephants are all completely equal
\nAnd everyone’s so joyful that they’re waiting for the sequel !<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Photo: Pexels.com<\/p>\n
Copyright: Rosemary McGuire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s a feisty little fellow and his name is Max E Mouse He’s the head of a large family in a public basement house Their Underground abode is not a place to wine and dine In Elephant and Castle on the southbound Northern Line It’s dirty, dark and draughty causing permanent bronchitis And Max could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-topics","tag-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":994,"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions\/994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humble-thoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}