Billy Collins Poems

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

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
...

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

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,
...

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

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
...

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.
...

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.
...