Lucky Cat by Billy Collins (from The Rain in Portugal)

 

 

It's a law as immutable as the ones

governing bodies in motion and bodies at rest

that a cat picked up will never stay

in the place where you choose to set it down.

 

I bet you'd be happy on the sofa

or this hassock or this knitted throw pillow

are a few examples of bets you are bound to lose.

 

The secret of winning, I have found,

is to never bet against the cat but on the cat

preferably with another human being

who, unlike the cat, is likely to be carrying money.

 

And I cannot think of a better time

to thank our cat for her obedience to that law

thus turning me into a consistent winner.

 

She's a pure black one, quite impossible

to photograph and prone to disappearing

into the night or even into the thin shadows of noon.

 

Such an amorphous blob of blackness is she

the only way to tell she is approaching

is to notice the two little yellow circles of her eyes

then only one circle when she is walking away

with her tail raised high – something like

the lantern signals of Paul Revere,

American silversmith, galloping patriot.