A sleeping cat, slim-eyed and silver-necked!
The best-skilled spider could not architect
The venous web that veils that hollow leaf,
Her velvet ear! The truth defies belief
Unless you grant each limb a sovereign soul -
Else how explain the lithe tail's rhythmic roll
When all the body lies in sleep entwined?
Lithe tail, ears, whiskers, white legs fore and hind,
Surprisingly agree with the old wives,
Who reckoned true the number of her lives.
Does not this milk-sprite, with her murmur low,
Outsoft and outserene the falling snow?
But stop. To make a poem of a cat
Is painting cloud-spheres on a canvas flat.
(c) 1999 Tom Recht