Billy Collins

There are many that I miss Having sent my last one out a car window Sparking along the road one night, years ago. The heralded one, of course: After sex, the two glowing tips

It seems these poets have nothing Up their ample sleeves They turn over so many cards so early, Telling us before the first line Whether it is wet or dry, Night or day, the

And I start wondering how they came to be blind. If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister, And I think of the poor mother Brooding over her sightless young triplets. Or

Remember the 1340’s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult. You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade, And I was draped in one of those capes that were popular, The

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, Its white flag waving over everything, The landscape vanished, Not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness, And beyond these windows The government buildings smothered,

The early sun is so pale and shadowy, I could be looking up at a ghost In the shape of a window, A tall, rectangular spirit Looking down at me in bed, About to

Sometimes the notes are ferocious, Skirmishes against the author Raging along the borders of every page In tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok You would never see him doing such a thing, Tossing the dry snow over a mountain Of his bare, round shoulder, His hair

I am standing on a disused iron bridge That was erected in 1902, According to the iron plaque bolted into a beam, The year my mother turned one. Imagine a mother in her infancy,

The way the dog trots out the front door Every morning Without a hat or an umbrella, Without any money Or the keys to her doghouse Never fails to fill the saucer of my

Now it is time to say what you have to say. The room is quiet. The whirring fan has been unplugged, And the girl who was tapping A pencil on her desktop has been

What scene would I want to be enveloped in More than this one, An ordinary night at the kitchen table, Floral wallpaper pressing in, White cabinets full of glass, The telephone silent, A pen

As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs And sauntered off the beaches into forests Working up some irregular verbs for their First conversation, so three-year-old children Enter the phase of name-calling. Every day a

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna Or on any river for that matter To be perfectly honest. Not in July or any month Have I had the pleasure if it is a

It is possible to be struck by a Meteor or a single-engine plane while Reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians Are flattened by safes falling from Rooftops mostly within the panels of The

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer, Wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns. How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets, Fully grasping the meaning of every

The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking. He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark That he barks every time they leave the house. They must switch him on on their way out. The

Tonight the moon is a cracker, With a bite out of it Floating in the night, And in a week or so According to the calendar It will probably look Like a silver football,

The murkiness of the local garage is not so dense That you cannot make out the calendar of pinup Drawings on the wall above a bench of tools. Your ears are ringing with the

Today I pass the time reading A favorite haiku, Saying the few words over and over. It feels like eating The same small, perfect grape Again and again. I walk through the house reciting

If ever there were a spring day so perfect, So uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze That it made you want to throw Open all the windows in the house And unlatch the door