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
...

You know the parlor trick.
wrap your arms around your own body
and from the back it looks like
someone is embracing you
...

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 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,
...

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.
...

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
...

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