Billy Collins Poems

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
...

The first thing I heard this morning
was a soft, insistent rustle,
the rapid flapping of wings
against glass as it turned out,
...

There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.
...

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room
bouncing from typewriter to piano
...

All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,
...

I remember the night I discovered,
lying in bed in the dark,
that a few imagined holes of golf
...

I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
displaying their capital letters like license plates.
...

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
...

I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulphurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.
...

Before I opened you, Jiménez,
it never occurred to me that day and night
would continue to circle each other in the ring of death,
...