Tag 9
Picnic, Lightning
Billy Collins
It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home.
Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly
within the panels of the comics, but still,
we know it is
possible, as well as the flash
of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within. The heart,
no valentine, decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch, or
a tiny dark ship is
unmoored into the flow
of the body's rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.
This is what I think about when I shovel
compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatiens --
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
clouds a brighter white,
and all I hear
is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone, the small plants singing
with lifted faces,
and
the click of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next.
Billy Collins
It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home.
Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly
within the panels of the comics, but still,
we know it is
possible, as well as the flash
of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within. The heart,
no valentine, decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch, or
a tiny dark ship is
unmoored into the flow
of the body's rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.
This is what I think about when I shovel
compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatiens --
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
clouds a brighter white,
and all I hear
is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone, the small plants singing
with lifted faces,
and
the click of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next.