FireI’m having a swell time reading
Lonesome Dove,
glad I still have 400 pages to go,
but this paperback is one
of a thousand things around me
I would not grab as I dashed into the street
if the house ever decided to burst into flames.
I probably couldn’t find the cat
for all the smoke filling every room,
so let me see, give me a minute . . .
I should have thought of this earlier
before the fire trucks arrived
and men in helmets were rushing past me.
But here I am out on the lawn in a bathrobe
with a few sleepy neighbors,
red lights flashing all over us.
I’m holding a photograph to my chest
and the cat is sitting next to me,
apparently mesmerized by the flames.
I’m happy with my choice
as I look down at you and me in a frame.
Here’s a chance for a fresh start, I figure.
And as for the ashes of
Lonesome Dove,
I can always get another copy, or maybe
that’s just where I was meant to stop reading.
MarijuanaWhen I was young and dreamy,
I longed to be a poet,
not one with his arms
wrapped around the universe
or on his knees before a goddess,
not waving from Mount Parnassus
nor wearing a cape like Lord Byron,
rather just reporting on a dog or an orange.
But one soft night in California
I walked outside during a party,
lay down on the lawn
beneath a lively sky,
and after an interlude of nonstop gazing,
I happened to swallow the moon,
yes, I opened my mouth in awe
and swallowed the full moon whole.
And the moon dwelled within me
when I returned to the lights of the party,
where I was welcomed back
with understanding and hilarity
and was recognized long into the night
as
The Man Who Swallowed the Moon,
he who had walked out of a storybook
and was dancing now with a girl in the kitchen.
Ode to JoyFriedrich Schiller called Joy
the spark of divinity,
but she visits me on a regular basis,
and it doesn’t take much for her to appear—
the salt next to the pepper by the stove,
the garbage man ascending his station
on the back of the moving garbage truck,
or I’m just eating a banana
in the car and listening to Buddy Guy.
In other words, she seems down to earth,
like a girl getting off a bus with a suitcase
and no one’s there to meet her.
It’s a little after 4 in the afternoon,
one of the first warm days of spring.
She sits on her suitcase to wait
and slides on her sunglasses.
How do I know she’s listening to the birds?
Copyright © 2024 by Billy Collins. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
