Two poems about those adorable pests

So, I have a hole in my roof.

My 101-year-old Detroit home has one of those very typical additions, a kitchen nook with a room above it. On the second floor, that creates a room off the bedroom I use as my office. It’s a nice, sunny room where I keep my poetry books, among other books, on shelves next to a day bed. Eventually, when I finish the going-on-three-years project of moving in, it will be a very cozy spot, especially on a late spring or early autumn day when sunlight is filling up the room.

(Did I mention it’s sunny?)

Recently, I heard something scurrying up in the attic space of that room—whatever the space is there between the ceiling and the roof. A few nights later, I heard it again. Eventually I knew I wasn’t coming from on the roof. It sounded like a 2- or 3-month-old kitten playing and tumbling. I know it wasn’t a kitten. I think it was (or is) a squirrel.

The main house has a walk-up attic, and there happens to be a window overlooking the addition. So I went up there and looked out, and there is a hole, about the size of a fist.

I’m pretty sure it is squirrels. Other than the neighborhood cats I see and the mice I know are around but thankfully not in my house (any more), I pretty much only see squirrels around here. I don’t think it’s raccoons or opossums, anyway. They’re probably around, but I don’t see them.

I’ve got people coming by tomorrow to help me patch it enough to get through winter. We’ll also fasten a board onto the ceiling directly below the hole in the roof, where the ceiling is sagging—just until spring when I can open the ceiling and fix it properly. I don’t want to cut open my ceiling when it’s so cold.

Meanwhile, I’d like to share these two poems that have been published in the book Squirrel Shenanigans, a collection of squirrel poems by members of the Detroit Poetry Salon with artwork by local artists. It started as a bit of a joke—one poet brought a clever poem (not) about squirrels, and the following week, another poet had written a response of sorts to it. Eventually most of us also wrote our own. We gave a reading at the Lawrence Street Gallery in Ferndale last November (2023), and then decided to gather them into a book. Lori Zurvalec, a Salon member and artist (and director of the Grosse Pointe Congregational Church Arts Ministry) put the book together. She has poetry and art in the book.

Here are my contributions. The second (The Stand-Off) is based on a true story.

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Elaine Elizabeth Belz
PICK-UP GAME

“They think it’s spring,” you observe,
pointing at two sprightly black squirrels.
I remark how disappointed
they’re about to be,

since I’ve seen the forecast—not that it’s difficult
to guess the cold hasn’t let go of us yet.
It’s February. Winter still, traditionally.
Sure,

anything can happen,
or so they say about the weather here
in Michigan, and also
everywhere,

even in California, where a friend
in San Francisco said to me, “You never know
what the weather will do here,”

to which I countered, “Don’t you have a calendar?”
which she did not appreciate.
You laugh.

The squirrels, panicking at our presence,
flee in opposite directions,
hopefully turning to more sensible pursuits,
like gathering food for the frigid days ahead.
Strong winds are casually assembling,
kicking the clouds around in a game
as mysterious to me as the squirrels’,

while I’m over here, guarded and fidgeting,
tracking the horizon,
trying to stuff my cheeks full
of your companionship, storing it away

for days when loneliness billows
tumultuous and cold as this wind, stark
and sublime as these clouds.

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Elaine Elizabeth Belz
THE STANDOFF

There I was, burdened with baggage,
waiting for my bus. A querulous squirrel,
it seems, had designs

on my lunch—a bag of Sun Chips.
Fierce eyes pierced
as if to my gut, as if
determined to judge

whose need for my Sun Chips
was greater—mine,
or theirs.

That squirrel had me cornered:
I couldn’t just pick up and run, couldn’t
abandon my luggage, couldn’t risk
missing my bus.

To toss or not to toss a chip or two
in their direction? Whether
this feisty little squirrel would taste
desperation, or fear, or French onion,
and attack? or whether,
their hunger for victory sated,
they’d be content with the snack?

Honestly,
I don’t remember how
our stalemate ended—only wild audacity
in a hangry squirrel’s eyes
as they calculated whether or not
they could take me