Billy Collins Poems

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
...

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
...

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
...

Tonight the moon is a cracker,
with a bite out of it
floating in the night,
...

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor’s office,
...

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.
...

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
...

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.
...

They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
...