The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins Page B

sonnet,
    the original woman’s heart of stone,
    the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.

Statues in the Park
    I thought of you today
    when I stopped before an equestrian statue
    in the middle of a public square,
    you who had once instructed me
    in the code of these noble poses.
    A horse rearing up with two legs raised,
    you told me, meant the rider had died in battle.
    If only one leg was lifted,
    the man had elsewhere succumbed to his wounds;
    and if four legs were touching the ground,
    as they were in this case—
    bronze hooves affixed to a stone base—
    it meant that the man on the horse,
    this one staring intently
    over the closed movie theater across the street,
    had died of a cause other than war.
    In the shadow of the statue,
    I wondered about the others
    who had simply walked through life
    without a horse, a saddle, or a sword—
    pedestrians who could no longer
    place one foot in front of the other.
    I pictured statues of the sickly
    recumbent on their cold stone beds,
    the suicides toeing the marble edge,
    statues of accident victims covering their eyes,
    the murdered covering their wounds,
    the drowned silently treading the air.
    And there was I,
    up on a rosy-gray block of granite
    near a cluster of shade trees in the local park,
    my name and dates pressed into a plaque,
    down on my knees, eyes lifted,
    praying to the passing clouds,
    forever begging for just one more day.

Traveling Alone
    At the hotel coffee shop that morning,
    the waitress was wearing a pink uniform
    with “Florence” written in script over her heart.
    And the man who checked my bag
    had a nameplate that said “Ben.”
    Behind him was a long row of royal palms.
    On the plane, two women poured drinks
    from a cart they rolled down the narrow aisle—
    “Debbie” and “Lynn” according to their winged tags.
    And such was my company
    as I arced from coast to coast,
    and so I seldom spoke, and then only
    of the coffee, the bag, the tiny bottles of vodka.
    I said little more than “Thank you”
    and “Can you take this from me, please?”
    Yet I began to sense that all of them
    were ready to open up,
    to get to know me better, perhaps begin a friendship.
    Florence looked irritated
    as she shuffled from table to table,
    but was she just hiding her need
    to know about my early years—
    the ball I would toss and catch in my hands,
    the times I hid behind my mother’s dress?
    And was I so wrong in seeing in Ben’s eyes
    a glimmer of interest in my theories
    and habits—my view of the Enlightenment,
    my love of cards, the hours I tended to keep?
    And what about Debbie and Lynn?
    Did they not look eager to ask about my writing process,
    my way of composing in the morning
    by a window, which I would have admitted
    if they had just had the courage to ask.
    And strangely enough—I would have continued
    as they stopped pouring drinks
    and the other passengers turned to listen—
    the only emotion I ever feel, Debbie and Lynn,
    is what the beaver must feel,
    as he bears each stick to his hidden construction,
    which creates the tranquil pond
    and gives the mallards somewhere to paddle,
    the pair of swans a place to conceal their young.

House
    I lie in a bedroom of a house
    that was built in 1862, we were told—
    the two windows still facing east
    into the bright daily reveille of the sun.
    The early birds are chirping,
    and I think of those who have slept here before,
    the family we bought the house from—
    the five Critchlows—
    and the engineer they told us about
    who lived here alone before them,
    the one who built onto the back
    of the house a large glassy room with wood beams.
    I have an old photograph of the house
    in black and white, a few small trees,
    and a curved dirt driveway,
    but I do not know who lived here then.
    So I go back to the Civil War
    and to the farmer who built the house
    and the rough stone walls
    that encompass the house and run up into the woods,
    he who mounted his thin wife in this room,
    while the war