Caveat

You may have noticed that I have been writing a lot about Billy Collins...well these are the reasons why:
1. He is my favorite poet
2. I've been reading his poetry books lately on my commute
3. I haven't received my Randall Jarrell poetry book in the mail yet.

love,
Virginia

Reading on a Dim Metro Car

The lights were out in cars 3 and 4,
except for fluorescant rectangles above the doors
illuminating the standing few and their reading material.

No one seemed to mind,
but the conductor assured passengers
that he was aware of the problem.

I read about the springtime sunlight
in my dim corner.
Light so permeating, that it urged Billy Collins to smash a glass paperweight
release the photons or something.1

But what did the paperweight ever do?
He probably envies my dark seat
where he would be safe from the ecstatic Collins
and his hammer,
who never smiles.

A magic place
where the quiet train people
hold the paper themselves.

1. Today by Billy Collins

I fear Billy Collins.

I do!
With each fluid description,
I cower further from the pen.
He fills poems with tangible imagery:
women who have never birthed,
night draped across shoulders!
And my words mutiny.
There may be one image per poem
who joins in my selfish cause
perhaps for his own selfish reason.
Naturally, he wants to be recognized, too!
As the line that carried me through my bumbling career.

A phrase like "headache orange"
or an entire poem,
one of the wave-tossed poems I wrote
my first winter on the JARVIS.

But Mr. Collins, please,
your standard towers
and you tell Le Chien of "intolerable poetry".
I pray that you stumble
upon my columns of verse,
and instead of grumbling
turning the page,
that your eyes might catch a curve
or a shape in the poem's shadow
that reminds you of yourself
in the time when imagery
still belonged to your elders.

Fireflies in a Jar

Billy Collins once asked us to

"take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive."

If we can do that, then we can certainly catch poems in a jar and light their tails. So please catch your day-to-day poems in this jar, and create your own Firefly lamps for us all to share.