Morning
by Mary Oliver
Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.
from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston
Until this moment I did not know that Mary Oliver had a "cat" poem. Since I wanted to share the adorable pictures I took of Kitty Klaus and realized it didn't fit the post I was thinking of writing, I searched Mary Oliver + cats and came up with "Morning". The other post will be written, but this poems is actually fitting of the photos.
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