The Saving of the Cat

At the tremendous battle of Trafalgar

with thousands of poor seamen killed

by cannonballs and musket fire

(Admiral Nelson one of them)

a cat was rescued by a British tar

clinging to the muzzle of a lower-deck gun

when the great Santissima Trinidad

("Most Holy Trinity") went down.

Helas! Noël Mostert would later rail—

"the finest warship created under sail!"*

Was Moggy put ashore at Cadiz

with the Spanish wounded? Or taken to Blighty

on the Revenge?** In the madness of that fight something at any rate went right!

Far off in Germany the same day at Ulm,

Napoleon harvested a fresh hecatomb.

If Boney in the end had won,

and the Révolution left us less dismayed,

might history have been more fun?

Who knows? At least the cat was saved!

*Noël Mostert, The Line upon a Wind: The Great War at Sea, 1793–1815 (New York: Norton, 2008), 508. Of the combatants on both sides, 8,602 are reported killed or wounded at Trafalgar. Of these, 4,853 were killed.

In British usage, "tar" = (esp. Royal Navy) sailor; "moggy" = (unpedigreed) cat; "Blighty" = (from the Bengali bilētī, Indian Persian wilāyatī) England, home.

**Most likely, of course, it simply became the cat of the Revenge.

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

On Letting Well Enough Alone

Just because you can

Doesn't mean you should.

Stress is the spice of life.

The waiting's also good.

'Tis folly to be wise

Since ignorance is bliss.

You're nothing in their eyes,

Not nothing they might miss.

The cat is on the bed.

Don't try to wake the dead.

Let well enough alone.

That's what'll get you home.

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Sweet and Short

In an age of simplification,

I should keep this sweet and short.

Your phone may well proclaim your station,

but since it's sold, it must be bought.

So, tell us, please elucidate your thought.

They say you search for hidden things,

imagining what the future brings,

and what our poetry has wrought

(past tense and participle of “work,”

a struggle poets cannot shirk).

So what's the deal with all that prose?

Could it be something no one knows?

What good is melody?

What good is music?

If it ain’t possessing something sweet

Now it ain’t the melody

And it ain’t the music

There’s something else that makes the song complete,

do wah, do wah, dow wah,

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

*"It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing," title and lyrics Duke Ellington attributed to the trumpet and cornet player James Wesley "Bubber" Miley (1903–32).

N.B. See https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/beauty-is-everywhere-but-what-is-it-for/

Thursday, October 8, 2026