happy birthday, dear billy

I'm a tiny bit fond of him.

And, oh yes of course, his poetry. (He writes to me all the time. We talk on the phone every December 26, 2007).

A friend asked how I'm celebrating. Of course, here's what I told him:

"I call him and chat a bit. He stands in his slippers at a granite counter with good light on ripe bananas and muses about death (smile)."

How on earth are YOU celebrating Billy Collins' 68th birthday? How about writing a poem? Standing in your slippers at a granite counter with good light on ripe bananas?

Let's celebrate with a poem, shall we?

I Ask You
-Billy Collins

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.