For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

When I was a child, I awoke to the strange sight of a calf in the hallway by my bedroom. While some might think would be a moment for amusement, I thought otherwise.

The Boogeyman

comes in the form of
a calf in the hallway nudging 
the door half-open with its nose.
It looks in and without sound,
just stands there and stares,
its dark eyes reflecting
the light bulb in the hall, nothing else.
Years later, the boy tries to go to sleep,
to no avail, he can't get the calf out
of his mind, and then
that mouse in the wall, 
of which Wallace Stevens wrote,
begins to nibble away at his brain,
keep him wide awake.

Here is the first stanza of the poem from Stevens, an early 20^th Century American poet, who also like me was a native of Pennsylvania, that mentions “that mouse in the wall”:

Cotton Mather died when I was a boy. The books
He read, all day, all night and all the nights,
Had got him nowhere. There was always the doubt,
That made him preach the louder, long for a church
In which his voice would roll its cadences,
After the sermon, to quiet that mouse in the wall.

— from “The Blue Buildings in the Summer Air” by Wallace Stevens

I’d return to the theme of mice – and “that mouse in the wall” – a couple more times as you’ll see the next two days.

Today’s poem of the day comes from Poetry Daily: “The River” by Pascale Petit.