quite impossible to photograph

Getting this in just under the wire, tonight. Did you guys know that cats are extremely good? Mine have been especially excellent, today.

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.

—Billy Collins (b. 1941), "Lucky Cat" from The Rain in Portugal, 2016. I own more books of poetry by Billy Collins than any other single author, with the possible exception of John Donne.