The Hat Mouse

In an old hat thrown in a bin,
lost in an alley down the block,
lived a mouse who really was thin,
had no bed, chair, or alarm clock.

He was lonely and sometimes cried,
wanted a family of his own.
He was so homesick he could have died,
but still lived in the hat quite alone.

One day as he lay curled in his bed,
pink nose quivering with a bad cold,
and tail draped high over his head,
he remembered a tale he’d been told.

It was about a golden haired girl
who became lost in a forest,
and looking for a nice place to curl,
discovered a bed for a rest.

The tiny mouse knew that she’d slept,
and finally found her own house.
“I can too,” he said as he leapt,
leaving, a quite hopeful mouse.

He skipped across meadow and pond,
straight to the forest ahead.
Gleefully, he sang, when he found
a house as the story had said.

He thought he’d be fed and then rest
before he could find a small home.
Instead, beginning on his quest,
he realized he would no longer roam.

Sitting quite comfortably there,
sewing and humming a childhood tune,
a very white mouse with gray hair,
paused to listen to a crooning loon.

She looked and smiled with such care
upon seeing the tiny mouse face,
she wept and jumped up from her chair,
welcoming him back home to this place.

She kissed him and hugged him too tight,
cried aloud as she called him by name.
“Mother,” he yelled at the sight,
that his family was still the same.

His brothers and sisters rushed in from a swim,
each one joyfully shouted loud cheers.
They thought they'd never again see him,
but he'd returned to sooth all their fears.

Stuffed to his ears, he’d been fed,
hat mouse lay gazing at ever bright stars.
Home sleeping with a smile in his bed,
he dreamed of baseball, hockey and cars.