#billy collins

[apoemaday]

Rain

by Billy Collins

Some time after the books had been forbidden – The one about the woman and her daughter, The one about the boy who spoke poorly – And after the smoke from the incinerators had cleared, It was suggested that censorship be extended To the plover, the wild turkey, and the common moorhen. But these birds have done nothing, a few protested. That is precisely the problem, the loudspeakers announced. It rained that month day and night. Men with nets fanned out into the fields And shouted to each other along the shorelines. Teachers disappeared on the way to their cars. Then the committee came after the morning glory For its suggestive furling and unfurling And the ligustrum and the alstroemeria Because they were difficult to pronounce and spell. Then the pine tree for its tricky needles and cones And parsley and red and yellow peppers for no reason at all. You would think the lock and the gate Would be safe, but that was well before whispering, Shaking hands on the street, And hooking an arm around someone’s waist Became the subjects of discussion Across long granite tables behind dark glass doors. And the rain was constant and cold – fine days to curl up with a good book, someone joked – but there were no more books, just the curling up of people quietly in corners and doorways, bits of straw floating down the streets along the curbs into the turbulent rivers and out to sea.

[sicknessinmotion]

on forgetting & remembering. / billy collins — nick flynn — gwendolyn brooks — alex dimitrov — ocean vuong.

[havingapoemwithyou]

while eating a pear by billy collins

[solar-settings]

elegy, billy collins // lottie & nat, yellowjackets

[llovelymoonn]

billy collins

[lizormianillustration]

give me hares or give me death

[dabiconcordia]

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

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 neighbors' dog will not stop barking. I close all the windows in the house and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast but I can still hear him muffled under the music, barking, barking, barking, and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra, his head raised confidently as if Beethoven had included a part for barking dog. When the record finally ends he is still barking, sitting there in the oboe section barking, his eyes fixed on the conductor who is entreating him with his baton while the other musicians listen in respectful silence to the famous barking dog solo, that endless coda that first established Beethoven as an innovative genius. by Billy Collins

[bones-ivy-breath]

Litany by Billy Collins

[april-is]

April 8, 2024: As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse, Billy Collins

As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse Billy Collins

I pick an orange from a wicker basket and place it on the table to represent the sun. Then down at the other end a blue and white marble becomes the earth and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet, open a bottle of wine, then I sit in a ladder-back chair, a benevolent god presiding over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing a homemade canticle of thanks for this perfect little arrangement, for not making the earth too hot or cold not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees and the owl become possible, not to mention the rolling wave, the play of clouds, geese in flight, and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again and give thanks for the trout, the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows, as sun and earth and moon circle one another in their impeccable orbits and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

--

Also: Seeing the Eclipse in Maine, Robert Bly

Enjoy today's eclipse, North America!

More space-related poems.

Today in:

2023: Neither Time Nor Grief is a Flat Circle, Christina Olson 2022: Pippi Longstocking, Sandra Simonds 2021: Waking After the Surgery, Leila Chatti 2020: Gutbucket, Kevin Young 2019: Insomnia, Linda Pastan 2018: How Many Nights, Galway Kinnell 2017: The Little Book of Hand Shadows, Deborah Digges 2016: Now I Pray, Kathy Engel 2015: Why I’m Here, Jacqueline Berger 2014: Snow, Aldo, Kate DiCamillo 2013: from The Escape, Philip Levine 2012: Thirst, Mary Oliver 2011: Getting Away with It, Jack Gilbert 2010: *turning, Annie Guthrie 2009: I Don’t Fear Death, Sandra Beasley 2008: The Dover Bitch, Anthony Hecht 2007: Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl, Dorianne Laux 2006: Up Jumped Spring, Al Young 2005: Old Women in Eliot Poems, David Wright

[fishingforwords]

what else am i forgetting?

fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet: the complete edition || arturo ferrari, in the old street vicolo san bernardino alle ossa a milano || madisen kuhn, please don't go before i get better || james bay, let it go || imagine dragons, i was me || holly black, the cruel prince || amazon || billy collins, forgetfulness || salvador dali, disintegration of the persistence of memory

[extollingtheeveryday]

Billy Collins // "November"

[apoemaday]

The Lanyard

by Billy Collins

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room bouncing from typewriter to piano from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor, I found myself in the “L” section of the dictionary where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard. No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one more suddenly into the past. A past where I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard. A gift for my mother. I had never seen anyone use a lanyard. Or wear one, if that’s what you did with them. But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white lanyard for my mother. She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard She nursed me in many a sick room, lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips, set cold facecloths on my forehead then led me out into the airy light and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her with a lanyard. “Here are thousands of meals” she said, “and here is clothing and a good education.” “And here is your lanyard,” I replied, “which I made with a little help from a counselor.” “Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the world.” she whispered. “And here,” I said, “is the lanyard I made at camp.” “And here,” I wish to say to her now, “is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth, that you can never repay your mother, but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands, I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.”

[orchard-bliss]

Billy Collins, “Connect With Strangers Through Form”; Reading And Writing Poetry; (Masterclass.com).

[fadeintoyou1993]

"the art of drowning" by billy collins (poetry october 1991)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Stanisław Masłowski - Moonrise, 1881 :: Guillaume Gris

* * * *

On the Deaths of Friends Billy Collins ISSUE 232, SPRING 2020

Either they just die or they get sick and die of the sickness or they get sick, recover, then die of something else, or they get sick, appear to recover, then die of the same thing, the sickness coming back to take another bite out of you in the forest of your final hours.

And there are other ways, which will not be considered here. In the evening, I closed my eyes by the water’s edge and I pretended this is what it will look like or will not look like, this is where my friends keep going, a “place” only in quotation marks,

where instead of oxygen, there is silence unbroken by the bark of a fox in winter or the whine of an unattended kettle. With eyes still closed, I ran in the dark toward that silence, like a man running along a train platform, and when I opened my eyes to see who was running in the other direction

with outspread arms, there was the lake again with its ripples, a breeze coming off the water,

and a low train whistle, and there was I trembling under the trees, passing clouds, and everything else that was pouring over the mighty floodgates of the senses.

[Paris Review]

[sashayed]

In All the Excitement I Forgot to Ask His Name

In the middle of a walk across San Diego’s famed Balboa Park one damp, sea-soaked morning, I was politely introduced

by a woman in a blue jogging suit to the third fastest whippet in America, a young, wiry, white and tan creature crouching tensely by her side.

He can cover 200 yards in 11 seconds and crosses the tape at 35 miles per hour, she told me, as we stood under an enormous eucalyptus tree.

The dog was paying no attention. He was staring straight ahead across what looked like 200 yards of open lawn, restrained by a special leather leash.

Young, wiry, white and tan, poised at the end of a century of breeding, his tail was coiled under his belly, he had 11 seconds dancing in his eyes.

Billy Collins in Poetry, May 2003