Please Happy

Since returning to Los Angeles after the holidays, I’ve been reading Billy Collins (the poet I fell in love with over a few haikus about an eel and the moon). In truth, I’ve been hoping to read about death and dying. Something to either ease the panic I feel at night after everyone else is sleep. Or something to make me feel like I’m in the perfect place of despairing self-pity. Or something that says “enjoy the quiet of the early morning and stop whining about the fact that one day you’re going to die. Go Live.”

Excerpt from New Year’s Day:

And one more night be a small consolation
to us all for having to face a death-day, too,
an X in a square
on some kitchen calendar of the future,

the day when each of us is thrown off the train of time
by a burly, heartless conductor
as it roars through the months and years,

party hats, candles, confetti, horoscopes
billowing up in the turbulent storm of its wake.

I have a million things I love about the former New York State and US poet laureate. One of them is how I can hear him saying the poem. Another one is the winding path we travel with him in each poem, from his birthday to his death-day, from the kitchen to the Andes. Today, I’m thankful for poetry. The real stuff. The stuff that makes you cry because he said exactly how you feel.

This one below is not as overtly about death as some of his others. And it doesn’t necessarily describe how I feel.

But, suddenly, I LOVE IT!

Tension
By Billy Collins

Never use the word suddenly just to create tension.
-Writing Fiction

Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias
outside in the garden,
and suddenly I was in the study
looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.

When suddenly, without warning,
you planted the last petunia in the flat,
and I suddenly closed the dictionary
now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.

A moment later, we found ourselves
standing suddenly in the kitchen
where you suddenly opened a can of cat food
and I just as suddenly watched you doing that.

I observed a window of leafy activity
and beyond that, a bird perched on the edge
of the stone birdbath
when suddenly you announced you were leaving

to pick up a few things at the market
and I stunned you by impulsively
pointing out that we were getting low on butter
and another case of wine would not be a bad idea.

Who could tell what the next moment would hold?
another drip from the faucet?
another little spasm of the second hand?
Would the painting of a bowl of pears continue

to hang on the wall from that nail?
Would the heavy anthologies remain on the shelves?
Would the stove hold its position?
Suddenly, it was anyone’s guess.

The sun rose ever higher in the sky.
The state capitals remained motionless on the wall map
when suddenly I found myself lying on a couch
where I closed my eyes and without any warning

began to picture the Andes, of all places,
and a path that led over the mountains to another country
with strange customs and eye-catching hats,
each one suddenly fringed with colorful little tassels.