Searching and Digging for Meaning (Poem in Your Pocket Day 2017)

(borrowed from https://apps.carleton.edu/humanities/events/poem2017/)

It's been a while since I've posted, but I couldn't miss Poem in Your Pocket Day. It's been a nice tradition to start (and perpetuate) here at my school, something that several faculty members look forward to...as long as they remember to do it, that is.

This year, my mind has been all over the place--metaphorically, not literally, as too many of my students overuse. And I've pondered until I was weak and weary, not over forgotten lore but philosophies and core beliefs and deep educational mumbo jumbo like that, a little to do with writing, but more do to with thinking and what I believe, and where my loyalties lie. It might have something to do with completing the doctoral degree and facing new chapters in my life, but it could also have been the enchiladas I had on Tuesday. Regardless of the cause, I've had rumblings.

Regardless, this year, I chose two poems, as I could not settle on one, both with a common strand: small simple details. I've written about the importance of the small and simple before, but it's come back to me again. So, here are two poems by Billy Collins:

“Searching” by Billy Collins

I recall someone once admitting
that all he remembered of Anna Karenina
was something about a picnic basket,

and now, after consuming a book
devoted to the subject of Barcelona--
its people, its history, its complex architecture--

all I remember is the mention
of an albino gorilla, the inhabitant of a park
where the Citadel of the Bourbons once stood.

The sheer paleness of him looms over
all the notable names and dates
as the evening strollers stop before him

and point to show their children.
These locals called him Snowflake,
and here he has been mentioned again in print

in the hope of keeping his pallid flame alive
and helping him, despite his name, to endure
in this poem, where he has found another cage.

Oh, Snowflake,
I had no interest in the capital of Catalonia--
its people, its history, its complex architecture--

no, you were the reason
I kept my light on late into the night,
turning all those pages, searching for you everywhere.


...and here's the second one:

“Digging” by Billy Collins

It seems whenever I dig in the woods

on the slope behind this house

I unearth some object from the past—

a shard of crockery or a bottle with its stopper missing,

sometimes a piece of metal, maybe handled

by the dairy farmer who built this house

over a century and a half ago

as civil war waged unabated to the south.

So it’s never a surprise

when the shovel-tip hits a rusted bolt,

or a glass knob from a drawer—

little hands waving from the past.

And today, it’s a buried toy,

a little car with a dent in the roof

and enough flecks of paint to tell it was blue.

Shrouded in a towel, the body of our cat

lies nearby on the ground where I settled her

in the mottled light of the summer trees,

and I still have to widen the hole

and deepen it for her by at least another foot,

but not before I stop for a moment

with the once-blue car idling in my palm,

to imagine the boy who grew up here

and to see that two of the crusted wheels still spin.

I'm trying to get my students to notice the smaller things, the details, for they are often the overlooked important moments/situations/people in our lives. There is a joy in the small and simple things of life--those moments when you ponder and savor the connections with life, with the world, with ourselves, and with God.

I know this ramble is choppy, but so is my mind right now.

For previous poems that occupied my pocket, check the label on the right-hand side.