The Kitten’s Chaconne

Distressed by Tetzlaff,
Digitized, playing
The final movement

Of Bach’s partita,
The yellow kitten,
Highly leonine,

Spins on the table,
Looking for the source
Of those baffling cries,

Runs across the room
And leaps on a lap.
But now it’s closer,

And more frightening.
Kitten leaps again,
Then under the couch.

The grief in the tale
About the Chaconne
Is likely just lore.

There’s no evidence
Bach composed this cry
For his first wife’s death.

How much more eerie
Than melodrama
Is the thought that this

Storyless, wordless
Procession of sounds
Evokes such aching

Humans feel compelled
To make up tall tales,
And clueless kittens

Seek out an escape
Or somewhere to hide
From the sobbing storm.