Moon

By William Jay Smith b. 1918

I have a white cat whose name is Moon;

He eats catfish from a wooden spoon,

And sleeps till five each afternoon.

Moon goes out when the moon is bright

And sycamore trees are spotted white

To sit and stare in the dead of night.

Beyond still water cries a loon,

Through mulberry leaves peers a wild baboon,

And in Moon’s eyes I see the moon.

Source: Laughing Time: Collected Nonsense (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1980)

Biography

William Jay Smith told Contemporary Authors: "I am a lyric poet, alert, I hope, as my friend Stanley Kunitz has pointed out, 'to the changing weathers of a landscape, the motions of the mind, the complications and surprises of the human comedy.' I believe that poetry should communicate: it is, by its very nature, complex, but its complexity should not prevent its making an immediate impact on the reader. Great poetry must have . . .

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