Friday, August 15, 2008

Weighing The Dog

It is awkward for me and bewildering for him 
as I hold him in my arms in the small bathroom,
balancing our weight on the shaky blue scale,

but this is the way to weigh a dog and easier 
than training him to sit obediently on one spot
with his tongue out, waiting for a cookie.

With pencil and paper I subtract my weight 
from our total to find out the remainder that is his, 
and I start to wonder if there is an analogy here.

It could not have to do with my leaving you 
though I never figured out what you amounted to
until I subtracted myself from our combination.

You held me in your arms more than I held you 
through all those awkward and bewildering months
and now we are both lost in strange and distant
neighborhoods. 

-Billy Collins

1 comment:

Gavrich said...

Billy Collins is my favorite contemporary poet, hands down.

"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 could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed."

You have excellent taste in poetry.