Bloggers' (Silent) Poetry Reading

It warms my heart on this cold winter's day to read the poems shared across the internet. Too often poetry does not seem to have a place or even a welcome. As a classicist and a literary scholar, a person who has dedicated her life to language and poetry, I feel as if I'm irrelevant, stuck in limbo, somehow in the wrong time, or the wrong place.

Cat

The fat cat on the mat
may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream;
but he free, maybe,
walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
and tender men.
The giant lion with iron
claw in paw,
and huge ruthless tooth
in gory jaw;
the pard dark-starred,
fleet upon feet,
that oft soft from aloft
leaps upon his meat
where woods loom in gloom --
far now they be,
fierce and free,
and tamed is he;
but fat cat on the mat
kept as a pet
he does not forget.

-- J. R. R. Tolkien

There's more information about poetry reading day here.