Two small openings in a house, a cat flap and a letter-slot, carry the mood of Michael John Pickering's poem. The speaker has left both ready, one for "callers" and the other for "messages". The title, "Senseless Morning (No Word from You)", tells us what is being waited for, though only in brackets, as if the speaker would rather not say it aloud. We never learn who "you" is, and the poem keeps that person offstage. What arrives instead is a cat, a free newspaper and a packet of samples. The central idea is that when the one thing you want fails to come, the world's small, unwanted deliveries start to feel like mockery, and the day itself stops making sense.
The first stanza is built on a neat swap. The cat is "unasked for" and enters "after me like a free newspaper", so the animal is likened to junk. Then the junk is likened back to the animal: the packet of samples "drops - sure as a cat - on all fours." Each is described in the other's terms, as though the speaker's attention has gone so flat that a pet and a piece of advertising are interchangeable. "That knowing cat" adds a comic edge. It seems to know something, perhaps what the speaker is waiting for and not getting, but all it does is stroll in with perfect self-assurance. "Sure" is the stanza's quiet reproach. Cats and free samples land exactly where they are headed, and the message lands nowhere.
The second stanza moves from the doorway to the weather and then to the speaker's mood. "It's wet outside, and inside / always crosser and keener." The line break leaves "inside" hanging, so the room seems to take over the weather's job. "Crosser" is a homely word for irritable. "Keener" is stranger. It can mean sharper, like a wind, or more eager, and it sits close to "keen", the old word for wailing in grief. That echo may be accidental, but eagerness sharpened into hurt fits the scene. Then comes the bracket: "(pretty wet too, and colder)". It sounds like a mutter under the breath. One could hear a second meaning, that the indoors is wet and cold in a way rain cannot explain, but that is an inference, since the poem never mentions tears. The stanza's last action is the funniest and saddest: "The cat sat down on the paper." The news of the world is flattened under a cat. After the present-tense run of "enters" and "drops", the past tense of "sat" makes the moment sound settled, like a full stop.
The poem has no rhyme scheme. It is two six-line stanzas in a loose, speech-like rhythm, with most lines running to seven, eight or nine syllables. Commas, a semicolon, a dash and a bracket make it stop and restart like someone thinking aloud, and the lowercase line openings follow the grammar rather than convention. Sound still does quiet work. The -er endings keep chiming through "callers", "enters", "newspaper", "crosser", "keener", "colder" and "paper", a dull drone like a mood that will not lift. "Newspaper" comes back as plain "paper", a small repetition that suggests a day going round in circles. The last two lines are the plainest: "It's such a meaningless morning. / Can anyone see any sense in it?" The hiss of "see any sense" lingers, and "sense" answers the title's "Senseless", so the poem ends where it began. The question is addressed to no one, or to the empty house, or perhaps to the silent "you".
The poem is worth reading because it refuses to be grand. A longing that might have been dressed in big language is handed to a cat flap and some junk mail, and the comedy keeps it honest. It also catches something true about waiting. Every small noise at the door is a false alarm, and everything that is not the awaited thing turns to clutter. By ending on an unanswered question rather than a consolation, the poem leaves the reader sitting in the senseless morning with the speaker.