This week Mish from dVerse Poets’ Pub has invited us to share a poem on any theme. Her invitation included her charming photos of squirrels dark and albino, lively and alive.

My older sister Sue had a red knitted squirrel. She made a grey version for me in 1960, who was my childhood “bed-animal”.

I wrote most of this in 2016 after seeing a squirrel carcase under big shady oaks in Girton Road, Cambridge, as I cycled to the city centre.

I have added a couple more lines about Squilley’s adventures on his pre-teenage holidays. But not about the disdain in which he was held by some of my male friends at college. 

 Squirrel. Dead.  

Squirrel. Dead upon the road. 
Squirrel dead, et “mort” und “tod”. 
Squirrel who, in earlier days 
made harvests rich, along the ways
of almonds, walnuts, and Kent cobs. 
(He who gets is he who robs.) 

Squilley, in my childhood bed 
you were body; you were head 
listening without a word 
to those things that were unheard; 
to those things that went unsaid; 
to those things that dripped with dread. 

Squilley went on holiday - 
Isle of Wight; not far away. 
Squilley hid and stayed behind. 
Bed & Breakfast did not mind 
bundling him and posting back, 
with a toffee-acorn pack. 

On a river cruising boat 
Squilley travelled, quite afloat 
when the craft sustained a leak. 
Said Sue:“Evacuate! Oh eek! 
Take this sleeping bag! Take that! 
And what is this? Catch! Water Rat!” 

Squilley, in my spinster bed 
always there, with darned grey head 
listening without a word 
to those things that were absurd; 
to those things that went unsaid. 
Squilley. On the Road. Quite dead.  

© Kathy Labrum McVittie 2016; 2020