Note from Dave on his poem: “Now and then I post poems. This is an old one, an early publication–in fact, I used to keep track of poems published and, on my old list, this was number eight. It was published in a journal called Hellas many years ago. And it ‘really happened.’ I came home from teaching one day, saw the cat as described in the poem, and wrote the poem in one sitting (a thing that doesn’t happen very often for me).”
Here’s the poem:
(This is indeed Dave’s kitty, but not on the day of her wispy concert!)
Cat and Mandolin
My cat (a tortoise-shell, white underneath)
Lies sleepily, stretched out upon a sheaf
Of music I laid by my mandolin
Upon a table. Sunlight pouring in
The window makes her drowsy as she rests,
Notes of an old composer by her breast.
Her tail disturbs the silence lazily,
Brushing the mandolin, and sending free
Desultory notes into the languid air
Of afternoon—a lyric to compare
With that one Coleridge heard the wind-harp troll,
But far superior: The Oversoul
That moves creative thought with touches warm
Is incarnated better in this form.
“As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all” (Ecclesiastes 11:5).
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit ” (John 3:8).
Summer Setting 