Poem for Sunday and Family Cats

Why is Quiet "Kept"?
By Paul Hoover

They are crying out in restaurants,
so delighted to be speaking,
they appear to be insane.

But we are the silent types,
who hold speech within
like the rustle of gold foil.

We eat our words and swallow hard.
There's nothing much to say.
The knot's in its nest, breathing.
A hand thinks it's a bird.

The world "nows"; it doesn't know.
The world "wows." Then it snows.

A word arrives, silent and upright.
It stands in profile against a white wall.
It's here for safekeeping only.

Keep quiet, mice.
A cat's patrolling the area,
with drones and more drones.

The keys we carry unlock us every day
and lock us up again.  Hushed is the ward.
Now conjugate, please, to werd and to werld.

One of us has just conceived
the sum for infinity:  plus one, plus one, plus one.
In the cosmological phone booth,
there's always one more.

The fishing report's too thick to read,
but its cadence is that of a god.
Waves and ships are passing.
We can barely discern the semaphores
flashing through the fog.

And here are the ones who walk the walk and talk the talk,
blackening the day with news, with news.

--------

Daniel is home! And most of our day was spent cleaning the house in preparation for this, since the kittens have been living mostly in his room -- we had to clean it thoroughly, and wash all the things they've been sleeping on, which includes everything on his bed, and we had to vacuum the entire house to clean up the litter they kicked out of the pan. For now we are keeping a litterbox in the master bathroom just in case, but they've been good downstairs.

We picked up Daniel from Dulles and stopped at the food store on the way home because he was ravenous. For the past hour he has been trying to eat, catch up on work (he is on call this week despite being on the east coast) and stop kittens from both stealing his food and walking all over his keyboard. The kittens do not appreciate Saturday Night Live but they do like all the new smells son brought home with him. Here are pics of them and other cats glaring at them: