What Rotten Luck, Old Sock, Old Bean!

Pardon the poetry--this weekend has not been kind to me. I'd planned a trip to Stanley Park for Saturday afternoon, but I ended up sleeping it away. I slept away Sunday, as well, and most of Monday and Tuesday. And even now, I'm still rather woozy, so here you are--the script for my new comic (minus panel descriptions--there will be a few plot-related surprises in the illustrations!):

RATTY'S GHOST

A sleeping rat gets lost in dreams
Of idle wilds and cunning schemes;
Of secret raids on honeycombs,
And hats he's nicked from garden gnomes.
His whiskers twitch as he recalls
The scent of moss on sunken walls;
The wind that carries, from the eaves,
The snaily musk of rotting leaves.
And, fleeting as the damselfly,
A thousand fancies flutter by,
As splendid as the noonday sun,
On every single night but one:
A sleeping rat, whose days are through,
A rat with nothing left to do,
Might chance upon his own grey ghost
Amidst the dreams that pleased him most.

Though fussy Morning sweeps from sight
The specious scapes of playful Night,
Each grinning Jack inside his box;
Each nine-tailed Empress, just a fox--
Though all appears as ere it was,
Though twigs remain, where once were claws,
A backward-squinting rat might see
His phantom trailing faithfully.

A rat whose winters number three,
An ancient fellow, stiff of knee,
Might stretch himself across a stone,
And slip away with sun-baked bones,
But springtime sucklings, weaned in May,
Who've never felt a frostbit day,
Will race to fill their dying hours
With fluster-faced farewells to flowers.
From kindly oak to rowdy fern,
From toad to sparrow, each in turn,
A scrambling rat will dart and rush,
From dried-up creeks to valleys lush.

And when, above the soughing pines,
Apollo's blazing arc declines,
A rat, unwilling to retire,
Might surreptitiously conspire:
As reaching shadows grasp and trawl,
And conjure monsters on the wall--
A wily rat might hatch a plot
To stretch his mortal coil a jot,
And, as the hues of sunset fade,
He whispers to his patient shade,
And points, and waves, and gestures wide,
And struts about with fearsome stride.

With ghost as decoy, on the ground,
A sneaky rat, without a sound,
Might ride his tiptoes up a tree,
To huddle in the canopy,
Awaiting there, with trembling limb,
To pounce on Death, ere Death pounce him,
A pointed branch between his teeth,
A feather as his mourning wreath.
At last, it's time to start the show,
With Rat above, and Death below--
He's braced his branch between his toes;
He's loosed his grip, and down he goes,
A tiny god, a living dart,
A pointy stick against his heart;
A falling leaf among the rest,
A falling leaf that's done its best--

And Death has fallen in his tracks,
A dauntless Rat upon his back,
But, what is this?--the Rat lies still,
And slumped of spine upon his kill!
His pointed stick was leveled true:
It pierced the Reaper, through and through,
And then the Rat--his fragile breast
Was pricked as well, God grant him rest.
What rotten luck, old sock, old bean!
A sadder sight, I've never seen!
What grand adventures might have been!
A toast to you, old sock, old bean.

THE EMD