Explication of The Mouse

In the poem The Mouse, Snodgrass uses imagery to relate a death of a loved one to a dead mouse he found as a child.  He also uses free verse (the form of writing he went to after losing his daughter in a divorce).  The first stanza he begins telling the reader about the mouse laying there by the steps.  He describes the mouse as a "dusty little gray one."  Snodgrass uses the word dusty to put the image of death in the reader's mind.  They knew the mouse was dead but Snodgrass says "Afraid he might be dead.."  talking about denial that we go through as one of the steps of accepting death.  At the end of this stanza he explains to the reader how they put the mouse on a piece of tinfoil and walked around the house with it.  This clearly relates how we have a funeral with carrying the body to the cemetery.  In the second stanza he discusses how when we are children we cry about everything.  We cry when we don't get our own way and when we are hurting.  He tells the reader not to whine to get your own way.  In the third and fourth stanzas he tells us how we get through the bad times and go about our lives as normal.  The world doesn't stop for death or broken hearts.  In the last stanza he tells us how after time goes by we tend to forget our pain and not cry about it as much.