Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Boring you with more poetry.

I just can't help myself. I'm reading this book and each poem stirs me. Each one is like a light being turned on in my soul. I read them and I remember something I'm not even sure I knew.

Aimless Love
Billy Collins

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor's window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door--
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor--
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.


I feel like this is what it's like to be alive and in the moment. You fall in love with everything around you when you are alive enough to appreciate it. Even the dead mouse becomes something to love.

3 comments:

Kristen said...

This is really neat. My favorite line:

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

Sometimes I'm tempted to take my heart down, but I don't want to. I want to always be enchanted by life.

Sandra said...

That is my favorite line too! In fact, I was just going to post that line, but thought that it needed the rest of the poem.

aola said...

life/living makes me happy like that...sometimes I think I live in a fantasy novel but that's just the way I feel about the everyday things around me and I hurt for the people I know (aka my husband) who are too busy to notice