Billy Collins Poem by Matthew Coombe

My pen has hovered over the page like a metal detector
so many times because of you.

All our walks through your woods, around your lake.
Me, the blind beggar and you leading me gently
by the hand over the twisted roots of meaning.
And I cannot count the number of nights we have sat
facing one another across the table in the kitchen,
revelling in the rusty sting of whiskey, while the
candle flame flits endlessly over the wallpaper.

But this is my time to address you and for you
to quit shuffling the deck, leave the dog to twitching in her sleep.

It feels like I have been living in the same house for years
and then you arrive one day on my doorstep to ask directions -
as ordinary as a pigeon settling on the garden fence -
to point out a door in a hallway I had never seen before,
behind which lay I room I never knew existed.

So just so you know…
the room now has it’s own bed, a bright spray of flowers
that we change daily and on the wall hangs a small picture
of a horse grazing in a sunny meadow.
A horse fenced in by the blinding heights
of a black, square frame of wood.