Read Online Aimless Love by Billy Collins - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Billy Collins
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the duck/rabbit—
why, even paradoxical Wittgenstein
could not find his way back to the rabbit
once he had beheld the bill of the duck.
But which was which?
Were the stars the rabbit
and the blown clouds the duck?
or the other way around?
You’re being ridiculous,
I said to myself,
on the walk back to the house,
but then the correct answer struck me
not like a bolt of lightning,
but more like a heavy bolt of cloth.
My Hero
Just as the hare is zipping across the finish line,
the tortoise has stopped once again
by the roadside,
this time to stick out his neck
and nibble a bit of sweet grass,
unlike the previous time
when he was distracted
by a bee humming in the heart of a wildflower.
Poetry Workshop Held in a Former Cigar Factory in Key West
After our final class, when we disbanded
as the cigar rollers here had disbanded decades ago,
getting up from their benches for the last time
as the man who read to them during their shift
closed his book without marking the page where he left off,
I complimented myself on my restraint.
For never in that sunny white building
did I draw an analogy between cigar-making and poetry.
Not even after I had studied the display case
containing the bladed
chaveta
, the ring gauge,
and the hand guillotine with its measuring rule
did I suggest that the cigar might be a model for the poem.
Nor did I ever cite the exemplary industry
of those anonymous rollers and cutters—
the best producing 300 cigars in a day
compared to 3 flawless poems in a lifetime if you’re lucky—
who worked the broad leaves of tobacco
into cylinders ready to be held lightly in the hand.
Not once did I imply that tightly rolling an intuition
into a perfectly shaped, hand-made thing
might encourage a reader to remove the brightly colored
encircling band and slip it over her finger
and take the poet as her spouse in a sudden puff of smoke.
No, I kept all of that to myself, until now.
Returning the Pencil to Its Tray
Everything is fine—
the first bits of sun are on
the yellow flowers behind the low wall,
people in cars are on their way to work,
and I will never have to write again.
Just looking around
will suffice from here on in.
Who said I had to always play
the secretary of the interior?
And I am getting good at being blank,
staring at all the zeroes in the air.
It must have been all the time spent
in the kayak this summer
that brought this out,
the yellow one which went
nicely with the pale blue life jacket—
the sudden, tippy
buoyancy of the launch,
then the exertion, striking
into the wind against the short waves,
but the best was drifting back,
the paddle resting athwart the craft,
and me mindless in the middle of time.
Not even that dark cormorant
perched on the
No Wake
sign,
his narrow head raised
as if he were looking over something,
not even that inquisitive little fellow
could bring me to write another word.
NEW POEMS
The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska
Too bad you weren’t here six months ago,
was a lament I heard on my visit to Nebraska.
You could have seen the astonishing spectacle
of the sandhill cranes, thousands of them
feeding and even dancing on the shores of the Platte River.
There was no point in pointing out
the impossibility of my being there then
because I happened to be somewhere else,
so I nodded and put on a look of mild disappointment
if only to be part of the commiseration.
It was the same look I remember wearing
about six months ago in Georgia
when I was told that I had just missed
the spectacular annual outburst of azaleas,
brilliant against the green backdrop of spring
and the same in Vermont six months before that
when I arrived shortly after
the magnificent foliage had gloriously peaked,
Mother Nature, as she is called,
having touched the hills with her many-colored brush,
a phenomenon that occurs, like the others,
around the same time every year when I am apparently off
in another state, stuck in
why, even paradoxical Wittgenstein
could not find his way back to the rabbit
once he had beheld the bill of the duck.
But which was which?
Were the stars the rabbit
and the blown clouds the duck?
or the other way around?
You’re being ridiculous,
I said to myself,
on the walk back to the house,
but then the correct answer struck me
not like a bolt of lightning,
but more like a heavy bolt of cloth.
My Hero
Just as the hare is zipping across the finish line,
the tortoise has stopped once again
by the roadside,
this time to stick out his neck
and nibble a bit of sweet grass,
unlike the previous time
when he was distracted
by a bee humming in the heart of a wildflower.
Poetry Workshop Held in a Former Cigar Factory in Key West
After our final class, when we disbanded
as the cigar rollers here had disbanded decades ago,
getting up from their benches for the last time
as the man who read to them during their shift
closed his book without marking the page where he left off,
I complimented myself on my restraint.
For never in that sunny white building
did I draw an analogy between cigar-making and poetry.
Not even after I had studied the display case
containing the bladed
chaveta
, the ring gauge,
and the hand guillotine with its measuring rule
did I suggest that the cigar might be a model for the poem.
Nor did I ever cite the exemplary industry
of those anonymous rollers and cutters—
the best producing 300 cigars in a day
compared to 3 flawless poems in a lifetime if you’re lucky—
who worked the broad leaves of tobacco
into cylinders ready to be held lightly in the hand.
Not once did I imply that tightly rolling an intuition
into a perfectly shaped, hand-made thing
might encourage a reader to remove the brightly colored
encircling band and slip it over her finger
and take the poet as her spouse in a sudden puff of smoke.
No, I kept all of that to myself, until now.
Returning the Pencil to Its Tray
Everything is fine—
the first bits of sun are on
the yellow flowers behind the low wall,
people in cars are on their way to work,
and I will never have to write again.
Just looking around
will suffice from here on in.
Who said I had to always play
the secretary of the interior?
And I am getting good at being blank,
staring at all the zeroes in the air.
It must have been all the time spent
in the kayak this summer
that brought this out,
the yellow one which went
nicely with the pale blue life jacket—
the sudden, tippy
buoyancy of the launch,
then the exertion, striking
into the wind against the short waves,
but the best was drifting back,
the paddle resting athwart the craft,
and me mindless in the middle of time.
Not even that dark cormorant
perched on the
No Wake
sign,
his narrow head raised
as if he were looking over something,
not even that inquisitive little fellow
could bring me to write another word.
NEW POEMS
The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska
Too bad you weren’t here six months ago,
was a lament I heard on my visit to Nebraska.
You could have seen the astonishing spectacle
of the sandhill cranes, thousands of them
feeding and even dancing on the shores of the Platte River.
There was no point in pointing out
the impossibility of my being there then
because I happened to be somewhere else,
so I nodded and put on a look of mild disappointment
if only to be part of the commiseration.
It was the same look I remember wearing
about six months ago in Georgia
when I was told that I had just missed
the spectacular annual outburst of azaleas,
brilliant against the green backdrop of spring
and the same in Vermont six months before that
when I arrived shortly after
the magnificent foliage had gloriously peaked,
Mother Nature, as she is called,
having touched the hills with her many-colored brush,
a phenomenon that occurs, like the others,
around the same time every year when I am apparently off
in another state, stuck in
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