Three New Reasons Why I Love Billy Collins

Some Days

Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs,
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds,
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?


Budapest

My pen moves along the page
like the snout of a strange animal
shaped like a human arm
and dressed in the sleeve of a loose green sweater.

I watch it sniffing the paper ceaselessly,
intent as any forager that has nothing
on its mind but the grubs and insects
that will allow it to live another day.

It wants only to be here tomorrow,
dressed perhaps in the sleeve of a plaid shirt,
nose pressed against the page,
writing a few more dutiful lines

while I gaze out the window and imagine Budapest
or some other city where I have never been.


Pavilion

I sit in the study,
simple walls, complicated design of carpet.
I read a book with a bright red cover.
I write something down.

I look up a fact in an encyclopedia
and copy it onto a card,
the lamp burning,
a painting leaning against a chair.

I find a word in a dictionary
and copy it onto the back of an envelope,
the piano heavy in the corner,
the fan turning slowly overhead.

Such is life in this pavilion
of paper and ink
where a cup of tea is cooling,
where the windows darken and then fill with light.

But I have had enough of it--
the slope of paper on the desk,
books on the floor like water lilies,
the jasmine drying out in its pot.

In fact, I am ready to die,
ready to return as something else,
like a brown-and-white dog
with his head always out the car window.

Then maybe, if you were still around,
walking along a street in linen clothes,
a portfolio under your arm,
you would see me go by,

my eyes closed,
wet nose twitching,
my ears blown back,
a kind of smile on my long dark lips.