In Honor of National Poetry Day and Poetry Wednesday: Billy Collins

The Order of the Day  A morning after a week of rain and the sun shot down through the branches into the tall, bare windows. The brindled cat rolled over on his back, and I could hear you in the kitchen grinding coffee beans into a powder. Everything seemed especially vivid because I knew we were all going to die, first the cat, then you, then me, then somewhat later the liquefied sun was the order I was envisioning. But then again, you never really know. The cat had a fiercely healthy look, his coat so bristling and electric I wondered what you had been feeding him and what you had been feeding me as I turned a corner and beheld you out there on the sunny deck lost in exercise, running in place, knees lifted high, skin glistening- and that toothy, immortal-looking smile of yours. by Billy Collins  from The Trouble with Poetry courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac

Poetry Wednesday: A Small-Sized Mystery

A Small-Sized Mystery

Leave a door open long enough,
a cat will enter.
Leave food, it will stay.
Soon, on cold nights,
you’ll be saying “excuse me”
if you want to get out of your chair.
But one thing you’ll never hear from a cat
is “excuse me.”
Nor Einstein’s famous theorem.
Nor “The quality of mercy is not strained.”
In the dictionary of Cat, mercy is missing.
In this world where much is missing,
a cat fills only a cat-sized hole.
Yet your whole body turns toward it
again and again because it is there.

by Jane Hirshfield
courtesy The Writer's Almanac