Free Aimless Love by Billy Collins Page A

an eye on me as I walk along,
    as if they all knew my password
    and the name of the little town where I was born.
Lesson for the Day
    I didn’t know Marianne Moore
    had written a little ode to a steam roller
    until this morning. She has it walking
    back and forth over the particles it has crushed.
    She must have watched a lot of cartoons.
    She also compares it to a butterfly unflatteringly.
    I like it better when she speaks to a snail.
    It’s pleasurable to picture her in a garden
    bending forward in her dated black clothes
    and her tilted black triangle of a hat,
    as she seriously addresses the fellow curled in its shell.
    But when I see her standing before the big drum
    of a steam roller and saying not very nice things,
    only one eventuality ever comes to mind,
    for I, too, am a serious student of cartoons.
    And no one wants to avoid seeing
    a flattened Marianne Moore hanging out to dry
    on a clothesline or propped up
    as a display in a store window more than I.
Promenade
    As much as these erratic clouds keep sweeping
    this way and that over the roof
    of this blue house bordered by hedges and fruit trees,
    and as much as the world continues to run
    in all directions with its head in its hands,
    there is one particular robin who appears
    every morning on a section of lawn
    by the front door with such regularity
    he could be a lighthouse keeper or a clock maker.
    He could be Immanuel Kant were he not so small
    and feathered, whom the citizens set their watches by
    as he walked through town with his hair curled.
    It takes a lot to startle this bird—
    only a hand clap will make him rise
    to one of the low branches of the nearby apple tree.
    So I am wondering if he would allow me
    to slip a small collar around his neck
    and take him for a walk, first around the house
    then later, when more trust has been gained,
    into town where we would pass the locals
    with their children and orthodox dogs in tow,
    and I would hold the robin lightly by a string
    as we waited to cross the street, then he would hop
    off the curb and off we would go
    not caring about what people were saying
    even when we stopped at a store front
    to admire our strange reflections in the window.
The Unfortunate Traveler
    Because I was off to France, I packed
    my camera along with my shaving kit,
    some colorful boxer shorts, and a sweater with a zipper,
    but every time I tried to take a picture
    of a bridge, a famous plaza,
    or the bronze equestrian statue of a general,
    there was a woman standing in front of me
    taking a picture of the very same thing,
    or the odd pedestrian blocked my view,
    someone or something always getting between me
    and the flying buttress, the river boat,
    a bright café awning, an unexpected pillar.
    So into the little door of the lens
    came not the kiosk or the altarpiece.
    No fresco or baptistry slipped by the quick shutter.
    Instead, my memories of that glorious summer
    of my youth are awakened now,
    like an ember fanned into brightness,
    by a shoulder, the back of a raincoat,
    a wide hat or towering hairdo–
    lost time miraculously recovered
    by the buttons on a gendarme’s coat
    and my favorite,
    the palm of that vigilant guard at the Louvre.
Drinking Alone
        after Li Po
    This is not after Li Po
    the way the state is after me
    for neglecting to pay all my taxes,
    nor the way I am after
    the woman in front of me
    on the long line at the post office.
    Li Po, I am not saying
    “After you”
    as I stand holding open
    one of the heavy glass doors
    that divide the centuries
    in a long corridor of glass doors.
    No, the only way this is after you
    is in the way they say
    it’s just one thing after another,
    like the way I will pause
    to raise a glass of wine to you
    after I finish writing this poem.
    So let me get back
    to sitting in the wind alone
    among the pines with a pencil in my hand.
    After all, you had your turn,
    and mine will soon be done
    then someone else will sit here after me.
To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High