Billy Collins Sunday - You, Reader

You, Reader
by Billy Collins from The Trouble with Poetry (Random House)

I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you,

that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl.

Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but, listen-- it was just a matter of time

before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning--
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside--

and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that  were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time--

me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.


This seemed to me to be the perfect poem for a dreary Sunday on which nothing much is happening.  Instead of getting up early and writing, my day has been spent reading-- blogs; the newspaper;the Ruth Rendell mystery I started on Friday; junk mail, old to do lists, and articles that have accumulated on my desk.

I love the idea that it is on ordinary days such as this, in the midst or ordinary tasks that ordinary thoughts, such as wondering about the relationship between the salt and pepper shakers, can take shape into a not-so-ordinary poem or essay or story.  The more I write, the more I realize that this is the way the writing life works, at least for me-- more, "Hmmmm," than, "Eureka!"

So yes Billy Collins, you were the one who got up early and wrote this poem.  But the day will come when I will be the one to get up early (or earlyish).  And on that morning I will notice the way the banana and apple are cuddling in the fruit bowl.  And I'll write a poem about that, and maybe mention too, that they make a delicious fruit salad when peeled and sliced and sauteed in a dab of butter with a little nutmeg and cinnamon.  And then who will be biting their lip then, Mr. Collins, envious of my poem or perhaps, just my breakfast. 



Autumn, by Giuseppe Arcimbaldo
An artist who painted extraordinary
portraits composed of ordinary objects