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.

The New Trampoline

This poem was written in April, 1996 when the girls were little. I wanted to relate their joy and exuberance on the trampoline with the journey they were about to take.  It is also a reflection of differences between them.  Recently, I was touched by something Breanne told me about how magical her childhood had been; how she imagined a world of secret places around our backyard.  I always imagined our home to be too small and dull, but I should have trusted in the powers of a child's imagination to transmute the ordinary into the extraordinary.


The New Trampoline


Early Spring, between snows, we set up.
Stretched black skin between silver springs
Round eye to heaven, door and navel.
The elders hold the blanket corners.


The youngest daughter and her friend are first.
Tentative steps around the edges, then a timid bounce.
Giggling they gambol like newborn kids, hand in hand.
Each leaps higher, nearly airborne.


But the eldest daughter will lie spread eagle, alone,
Counting clouds in a cloudless sky.
Expanding upward to the edge of the earth
And beyond that blue bowl to the stars above.


I might give her a compass for that airy journey
I think, but remember, alas,
She must find her own way 
Beyond this gripping earth.
My silent task, at last, to break her falls
Again and again.








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