Passengers by Billy Collins

Traveling to Chicago this week, this poem concerning flying struck me.  I am sure Breanne knows what I mean, although I am sure she doesn't feel like jubilizing . . . . .

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats

with the possible company of my death,

this sprawling miscellany of people---

carry-on bags and paperbacks---

that could be gathered in a flash

into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.

Not that I think

if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,

holding hands like a ring of sky divers,

into a sudden gasp of brightness,

or that there would be some common spot

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,

some spaceless, pillarless Greece

where we could, at the count of three,

toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It's just that the way that man has his briefcase

so carefully arranged,

the way that girl is cooling her tea,

and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter's hair . . . 

and when you consider the altitude,

the secret parts of the engines,

and all the hard water and the deep canyons below . . . .

well, I think it would be good if one of us

maybe stood up and said a few words,

or, so as not to involve the police,

at least quietly wrote something down.

On Turning Ten by Billy Collins

I have been reading Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins, the Poet Laureate.  I am not taking a lot away from the book so far.  He certainly can write, but I don't feel moved by most of his poems.  Sometimes, however, I need to re-read them a couple of times.  One however, struck me immediately.  I was reminded of some conversations I have had recently with Emica about her childhood and  in thinking about my own. It is the fourth stanza that resonated with me in this poem.



On Turning Ten


The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something, 
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light - 
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of  the soul.


You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.


But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.


This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.


It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees, I bleed.