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| (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.
