A trio of poems from Billy Collins

I'm reading Picnic, Lightning tonight before the library demands its return. This trio represents a good balance of Collins' work, and I like these better than the ones in which he takes things altogether too seriously... The first poem is a simple observation we've all had about the importance of timing, and I had a similar thought just last week when the cabinet door in the laundry room would not shut until I had directed it four times to do so... I thought, those three seconds of frustration might have saved my life... Of course, they also could have cost me my life, but that's not what I thought at the time. That's what makes me an optimist.



I Go Back To The House For A Book

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,

another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,

a ghost in his ghost car,
another knot in the string of time,
a good three minutes ahead of me —
a spacing that will now continue
for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I think I see him
a few people in front of me on a line
or getting up from a table
to leave the restaurant just before I do,
slipping into his coat on the way out the door.

But there is no catching him,
no way to slow him down
and put us back in synch,
unless one day he decides to go back
to the house for something,

but I cannot imagine
for the life of me what that might be.
He is out there always before me,
blazing my trail, invisible scout,
hound that pulls me along,

shade I am doomed to follow,
my perfect double,
only bumped an inch into the future,
and not nearly as well-versed as I
in the love poems of Ovid —

I who went back to the house
that fateful winter morning and got the book.






This next one is just too funny, thinking of a man with a catalog full of half-naked women critiquing their expressions and jotting down all the foreign and fancy-sounding names for lingerie...

Victoria's Secret

The one in the upper-left-hand corner
is giving me a look
that says I know you are here
and I have nothing better to do
for the remainder of human time
than return your persistent but engaging stare.
She is wearing a deeply scalloped
flame-stitch halter top
with padded push-up styling
and easy side-zip tap pants.

The one on the facing page, however,
who looks at me over her bare shoulder,
cannot hide the shadow of annoyance in her brow.
You have interrupted me,
she seems to be saying,
with your coughing and your loud music.
Now please leave me alone;
let me finish whatever it was I was doing
in my organza-trimmed
whisperweight camisole with
keyhole closure and point d'esprit mesh back.

I wet my thumb and flip the page.
Here, the one who happens to be reclining
in a satin and lace merry widow
with an inset lace-up front,
decorated underwire cups and bodice
with lace ruffles along the bottom
and hook-and-eye closure in the back,
is wearing a slightly contorted expression,
her head thrust back, mouth partially open,
a confusing mixture of pain and surprise
as if she had stepped on a tack
just as I was breaking down
her bedroom door with my shoulder.

Nor does the one directly beneath her
look particularly happy to see me.
She is arching one eyebrow slightly
as if to say, so what if I am wearing nothing
but this stretch panne velvet bodysuit
with a low sweetheart neckline
featuring molded cups and adjustable straps.
Do you have a problem with that?!

The one on the far right is easier to take,
her eyes half-closed
as if she were listening to a medley
of lullabies playing faintly on a music box.
Soon she will drop off to sleep,
her head nestled in the soft crook of her arm,
and later she will wake up in her
Spandex slip dress with the high side slit,
deep scoop neckline, elastic shirring,
and concealed back zip and vent.

But opposite her,
stretched out catlike on a couch
in the warm glow of a paneled library,
is one who wears a distinctly challenging expression,
her face tipped up, exposing
her long neck, her perfectly flared nostrils.
Go ahead, her expression tells me,
take off my satin charmeuse gown
with a sheer, jacquard bodice
decorated with a touch of shimmering Lurex.
Go ahead, fling it into the fireplace.
What do I care, her eyes say, we're all going to hell anyway.

I have other mail to open,
but I cannot help noticing her neighbor
whose eyes are downcast,
her head ever so demurely bowed to the side
as if she were the model who sat for Correggio
when he painted "The Madonna of St. Jerome,"
only, it became so ungodly hot in Parma
that afternoon, she had to remove
the traditional blue robe
and pose there in his studio
in a beautifully shaped satin teddy
with an embossed V-front,
princess seaming to mold the bodice,
and puckered knit detail.

And occupying the whole facing page
is one who displays that expression
we have come to associate with photographic beauty.
Yes, she is pouting about something,
all lower lip and cheekbone.
Perhaps her ice cream has tumbled
out of its cone onto the parquet floor.
Perhaps she has been waiting all day
for a new sofa to be delivered,
waiting all day in stretch lace hipster
with lattice edging, satin frog closures,
velvet scrollwork, cuffed ankles,
flare silhouette, and knotted shoulder straps
available in black, champagne, almond,
cinnabar, plum, bronze, mocha,
peach, ivory, caramel, blush, butter, rose, and periwinkle.
It is, of course, impossible to say,
impossible to know what she is thinking,
why her mouth is the shape of petulance.

But this is already too much.
Who has the time to linger on these delicate
lures, these once unmentionable things?
Life is rushing by like a mad, swollen river.
One minute roses are opening in the garden
and the next, snow is flying past my window.
Plus the phone is ringing.
The dog is whining at the door.
Rain is beating on the roof.
And as always there is a list of things I have to do
before the night descends, black and silky,
and the dark hours begin to hurtle by,
before the little doors of the body swing shut
and I ride to sleep, my closed eyes
still burning from all the glossy lights of day.





Ahh, and this one is pure peace. It's been years since I read it, but the effect is the same...

Shoveling Snow With Buddha

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 tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

Note to self

"Choose not the life of imitation
Distant cousin to the reservation...

Can't stop the spirits when they need you
This life is more than just a read thru"

-Red Hot Chili Peppers

Thoughts on God, sharing, Counting Crows and Albert Einstein

This has been a connect-the-dots kind of day.

Sadie loves watching Disney movies. We don't watch TV unless there's a political debate or address (hey, baseball games don't count as TV. They're oxygen), so she usually gets very little in the way of screen time unless it's YouTubeing funny pet videos or watching home movies (and what now-almost-four-year-old doesn't love being the star of her own movies?). (Really, I must stop with all of these asides.)

So when the occasional phone call from a friend comes in or, as today, David is traveling and I'm balancing dog, child and dinner, a movie it is. Tonight Sadie watched some of Beauty and the Beast and was fascinated by what motivates Gaston, the villain. I'm a peacenik of sorts, so when she asks why someone is mean, I tell her they are not mean but are acting in a mean fashion or making poor choices. Then the "why?"s begin and the conversation typically goes like this:

ME
Maybe they're acting mean because they're lonely.

SADIE
Why are they lonely?

ME
Well, maybe someone hurt their feelings and now they don't trust people.

SADIE
Why don't they trust people?

ME
Well, maybe because someone made them sad.

SADIE
Why did they make them sad?

ME
Because some people are just mean.

(See how this gets us nowhere? But I can't just say "Some people are evil," like David does -- and not because I think it's untrue... I'm no Hitler apologist [then again, I would not have hanged Saddam Hussein] but rather I don't want her growing up with black and white thought patterns.) (I am clearly committed to the aside and should just title my first novel "Footnote.")

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: As a parent, you're totally in charge of developing your child's moral compass. Not easy, that, especially when your own ideas of right and wrong are not anchored to a magnet like religion. So I took heart when Sadie Sue gave a prized possession to a little boy she met in a parking lot today just to be friendly and that she was asking questions about actions, intent and good vs. evil. (Another digression: I don't use the word "die" with Sadie; instead, we talk about "transforming." I would like to think that it will save her all of the work I had to go through to shrug off heaven and hell, but I realize it's just as likely that she'll wind up a fundamentalist compound-dweller.)

So it's no surprise that parenthood is a time of seeking for me; why are we here... what obligations do we have to ourselves, each other, the earth... Which beings are sentient and therefore require protection, how do we best balance our commitments and spend our time?

And these are things I love to think about anyway. The vast majority of the books I read in my spare time have to do with religion or purpose. That's what I love about much of the music/lyrics in my life: Ani's self-reliance and fearless challenging of the status quo; Counting Crows' crazy lyrics about death and brilliance and the spark that passes between people... Strangely, it's also what I love about physics and zero point field research: the idea that our laws of nature can somehow be interpreted as a field guide to living a moral life.

Then tonight I PPV the Bill Maher "documentary" "Religulous" and am underwhelmed by Maher's opus. He offered interviews with some interesting people but doesn't really mix it up with them; you can tell he's constantly trying to get a camera-friendly quip that shows him to be brilliant and his sparring partner to be dull-witted. Trouble is, he never really explores, never really plumbs the depth. He came in with an agenda and was not willing to be diverted from his plan of making the religious look like idiots. But all he did was make a religion out of his mockery of those with faith.

With all of these things coming together today, I am reminded of how much I like to read, think and write about these topics. Though I am considering making a real career out of agribusiness (even getting an MBA), this day gives me pause. Throughout my life, poetry and philosophy have been my true loves. Although it is extremely satisfying to find something you're good at, that doesn't mean it is your path. I think what I love about farming is the poetry and ritual of it all, not the business. Time to reconsider, I reckon.

Pendulum Swinger, Indigo Girls

I meet you for coffee
We get together periodically and
I got a bad case I can't shake off of me
The fevered wandering round wondering how it ought to be
You work in the system
You see possibilities and your glistening
Eyes show the hell you're gonna give 'em
When they back off the mic for once and give it to a woman

I dream like a mad one
Brutal fantasies I catch as catch can
I'm a psychic and a laywoman
I see love and I like to make it happen
What we get from your war walk
The ticker of the nation breaking down like a bad clock
I want the pendulum to swing again
So that all your mighty mandate was just spitting in the wind

It doesn't come by the bullwhip
It's not persuaded with your hands on your hips and it's
Not the company of gunslingers
The epicenter - love - is a pendulum swinger
She is she is she is

It's fine about the old scroll Sanskrit
Gnostic gospels, "The da Vinci Code"'s a smash hit
Aren't we dying just to read it and relate it
Too hard just to go by a blind faith
But they left out the sisters
I've been praying to a father god so long I really missed her -
The goddess of benevolence -
You should listen to your mama if you have a lick of sense left

It doesn't come by the bullwhip
It's not persuaded with your hands on your hips and it's
Not the company of gunslingers
The epicenter - love - is a pendulum swinger
She is she is she is

Pushed under by the main press, buried under a code of dress
Relegated by the Vatican
But you can't keep a spirit down that wants to get up again

If we're a drop in the bucket
With just enough science to keep from saying "Fuck it!"
Until the last drop of sun burns its sweet light
Plenty revolutions left until we get this thing right

It doesn't come by the bullwhip
It's not persuaded with your hands on your hips and it's
Not the company of gunslingers
The epicenter - love - is a pendulum swinger
She is she is she is

That is NOT what I meant...

From a TIME magazine article on the current Israel/Palestine conflict:

"Israeli officials are so confident of crushing Hamas that on Sunday the Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin gave his war briefing to the cabinet in comical verse."

Sure, you can have more fun in your life. But don't do it by killing people and making light of it.

I guess that's what happens when you're convinced you're G-d's Chosen People.

Observations on beliefs

For some, there's nothing better than a good, old-fashioned war: righteous anger boiling over into the streets... people killing and dying for what's "theirs" -- a god, some land, a political system. They can't handle the idea of their beliefs being questioned. They can't handle being unsure or, worse, wrong.

Sometimes I wish "I don't know" wasn't so hard to say/believe/accept. Wouldn't things be better if we could let go of our need to nail down the "truth"?

Butterflies, pin less. Fly more.

Obama's big night

I've made changes to Ani's "Hello Birmingham" below to reflect what I hope is a fantastic night for The Big O. I pray for his safety!


hold me down
i am floating away
into the overcast skies
over my hometown
on convention day

what is it about birmingham?
what is it about denver?
that the hate-filled wanna build bunkers
in your beautiful red earth
they want to build them
in our shiny white snow

now i've drawn closed the curtain
in this little booth where the truth has no place
to stand
and i am feeling oh so powerless
in this stupid booth with this useless
little lever in my hand
and outside my city is bracing
for the next killing thing
standing by the bridge and praying
for the next
doctor
martin
luther
king

it was just one shot
through the kitchen window
it was just two miles from here
if you fly like a crow
a bullet came to visit a doctor
in his one safe place
a bullet ensuring the right to life
whizzed past his kid and his wife
and knocked his glasses
right off of his face

and the blood poured off the pulpit
yeah, the blood poured down the picket lines
yeah, the hatred was immediate
and the vengence was divine
so they went and stuffed god
down the barrel of a gun
and after him
they stuffed his only son

hello denver
it's birmingham
i heard you may have trouble
down there again
and i'm just calling to let to know
that someone understands

i was once escorted
through the doors of a clinic
by a man in a bulletproof vest
and no bombs went off that day
so i am still here to say
denver
i'm wishing you all of my best
oh denver
i'm wishing you all of my best
oh denver
i'm wishing you all of my best
on this convention day