Oh I'm running late, I think.
I'll just recite a couple of light poems.
I've been getting too serious before I take my close.
Should I recite an attack against Joyce Kilmer
or recite a couple of poems about cats.
Any cat lovers here?
Do you want cat poems?
Cats.
Cat poems.
All right.
I'll give a couple of cat poems and then
I'll conclude with a couple of poems.
I didn't realize I was getting too late.
This might insult some cat lovers, I don't know.
[LAUGHTER]
"This is what your cat does while you're
at work this morning.
[LAUGHTER]
It sits in the middle of the room
and looks at something on the ceiling.
Then it gets up, stretches, and smells the chair leg
and my legs as I drink the coffee you so kindly left me
silently.
Then it sits in the middle of the room again
and stares up at the ceiling again.
Then it gets up again and walks around your apartment again
smelling my legs in the silence.
It's driving me crazy.
When I've left after locking the self-locking door exactly
as you told me to, dear, I don't think
the cat will notice my absence the way I hope you will,
you cat person, you cat torturer,
you member of the spay neuter humane society.
But we'll go on staring up at something
on or through the ceiling all day long
and smelling out the paralyzed legs of the locked-in chairs
until tonight when you come home and bring it
food, your moving legs and your electric presence."