Ballad for a Coal-Black Tom

The coal-black cat and the chipmunk sat, A verandah's length between them; All stillness crouched in a feline frame, The cat was slick as the chipmunk tame, And never O never his yellow eyes Betrayed his arrested energies,— The steely limbs beneath his coat, Desire latched from gullet to throat,— And he stared as if his horizon were Beyond the creature in stripèd fur.

The chipmunk sat with the coal-black cat, A verandah's length between them; Her deep-brown irises transfixed And dread and decorum intermixed, She disputed the blood in its fiery urge As the pulse endured the arterial scourge; Yet held her fear with assumed repose, For never O never would she disclose The verandah's stoven slat, where she Preempted an open sesame, And momentwise could escape a death With no test word for a shibboleth.

The fabulous strength in the tiny length Of the furred chipmunk was amazing; Her small heart burned as her bloodstream churned, Her glistered eyes stirred, blazing; Her limbs recoiled as she caught a glance Of the big tom's furious iron stance And before his muscled and tractable paws Held her broken neck in his blasphemous jaws, She leaped, a current of lightning, from The immobilized and terrible tom, Who barricaded the unhinged slat, Till his obstinate sleek was skeletal fat, And he eased him through with unhurrying grace To trouble the leaves in the hiding place.

The coal-black cat sat licking his chops, As feline gourmets do; With never a care he sniffed the air And sneezed a soft kerchoo! And he sniffled a sniff and cherished the whiff And laid him down for a snooze, As a chipmunk choir with chipmunk ire Sang the chipmunk blues; But the atavistic materialistic Tom with the tigery brain Gave a feline start as his feral heart Set him loose on the prowl again.