Free Aimless Love by Billy Collins

a motel lobby
    with the local paper and a styrofoam cup of coffee,
    busily missing God knows what.
Foundling
    How unusual to be living a life of continual self-expression,
    jotting down little things,
    noticing a leaf being carried down a stream,
    then wondering what will become of me,
    and finally to work alone under a lamp
    as if everything depended on this,
    groping blindly down a page,
    like someone lost in a forest.
    And to think it all began one night
    on the steps of a nunnery
    where I lay gazing up from a sewing basket,
    which was doubling for a proper baby carrier,
    staring into the turbulent winter sky,
    too young to wonder about anything
    including my recent abandonment—
    but it was there that I committed
    my first act of self-expression,
    sticking out my infant tongue
    and receiving in return (I can see it now)
    a large, pristine snowflake much like any other.
Catholicism
    There’s a possum who appears here at odd times,
    often walking up the path to the house
    in the middle of the day like a little ghost
    with a long tail and a blank expression on his face.
    He likes to slip behind the woodpile,
    but sometimes he gets so close to the window
    where I am standing with a glass in my hand
    that I start to review my sins, systematically
    going from one commandment to the next.
    What is it about him that causes me
    to begin an examination of conscience,
    calling to mind my failings in this time of reflection?
    It could just be the twitching of the tail
    and that white face, but his slow priestly pace
    also makes a contribution, as do the tiny paws,
    more like hands, really, with opposable thumbs
    able to carry a nut or dig a hole in the earth
    or lift a chalice above his head
    or even deliver a document,
    I am thinking as he nears the back door,
    not merely a subpoena but an order
    of excommunication with my name and a date
    written in fine Italian ink
    and signed with a flourish of the papal sash.
Carrara
    The Tyrrhenian Sea was bouncing off to the right
    as we headed south down the coast,
    and to the left rose the Apennine mountains,
    some with their faces quarried away,
    from where heavy blocks of white marble
    had been cut and carried down
    and stacked in rows in yards along the highway.
    Is anyone hiding within? I wondered,
    as we passed a little Fiat
    and were passed in turn by a green Lamborghini,
    hiding the way Pinocchio hid inside a log—
    maybe a David who goes by another name,
    or an anonymous girl caught dancing,
    or any other figure encased and yet to be revealed.
    Are you in there, Dawn with your sunburst halo,
    concealed from the freshly sharpened chisel?
    How about you, Spirit of Revolution
    waving a flag of marble
    and crushing the serpent of Tyranny with one foot?
    Or is nobody home, no one barely breathing
    in the heavy darkness of the pure white stone?
    Soon, we were standing on a wide beach
    where the body of Shelley had floated ashore,
    and where all those questions washed away—
    though later I pictured a sculptor wandering
    among the blocks, hands clasped behind his back,
    then deciding it was time to get to work
    on a towering likeness of his favorite English poet.
Report from the Subtropics
    For one thing, there’s no more snow
    to watch from an evening window,
    and no armfuls of logs to carry into the house
    so cumbersome you have to touch the latch with an elbow,
    and once inside, no iron stove like an old woman
    waiting to devour her early dinner of wood.
    No hexagrams of frost to study
    on the cold glass pages of the bathroom.
    No black sweater to pull over my head
    while I wait for the coffee to brew.
    Instead, I walk around in children’s clothes—
    shorts and a tee shirt with the name of a band
    lettered on the front, announcing me to nobody.
    The sun never fails to arrive early
    and refuses to leave the party
    even after I go from room to room,
    turning out all the lights, and making a face.
    And the birds with those long white necks?
    All they do is swivel their heads
    keeping