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Mr Smith’s Christmas Decorations

 

Precariously on his ladder he stands

Florescent angels clasped tight in his hands.

As a strong squalling rain-spattered wind makes him splutter,

He clings by the skin of his teeth to the gutter.

 

With maintenance of said gutter being quite lax,

It breaks off, and into the window he smacks.

The tinkling glass like sleigh bells all around,

He’s suspended by fairy lights feet from the ground.

 

As he struggles and writhes trying to make that last drop

The inflatable snowman with explosive ‘POP’

Blows him straight down the path, where his sad journey ends

On a luminous Rudolph and all of his friends.

 

The moral that his epitaph now bemoans is…

At Christmas, don’t try to keep up with the Joneses.

© Nicky Hetherington

(First published in Powys County Times)

Mouse

(In answer to the Robert Burns poem)

 

You are no wee timorous beastie

nest demolished by the plough.

In fact you’ve broken into my nest

though I cannot fathom how!

 

You’ve turned my pantry upside-down

left nothing there un-touched it seems:

pasta, rice, quinoa and couscous -

a cosmopolitan cuisine!

 

The cereals are obliterated

and the porridge is no more!

You’ve even nibbled your own entrance

underneath the pantry door.

 

Plastic tubs could not protect

their contents from your foraging.

You gnawed through them in seconds flat

then set about devouring

 

the noodles and the tagliatelle

in your never-ending feast,

while laughing at my humane traps -

emboldened and voracious beast!

 

So now my pantry’s like a bunker -

steel lined from roof to floor,

with wire wool in every crevice

and I’ve had to mend the door.

 

All the food’s in metal boxes,

kilner jars, ceramic pots - 

and now I play the waiting game

anticipating your next plots!

© Nicky Hetherington

(Published in Cultivating Caterpillars)

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