Good Morning,
May has arrived and National Poetry Month is over. April was spent pouring through all the volumes of poetry on the bookshelves, in order to find poems to be posted on Poetry for Open Spaces. Old familiar poems from childhood were rediscovered, and new poems were found in books that have been on the shelf for years. Here is one that I thought perfectly suited the mood of the The Early Riser.
Morning
Why do we bother with the rest
of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious
perfumes,
his many pointed stars?
This is the best –
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on
espresso –
maybe a splash of water on the
face,
a palmful of vitamins –
but mostly buzzing around the
house on espresso,
dictionary and atlas open on the
rug,
the typewriter waiting for the
key of the head,
a cello on the radio,
and if necessary, the windows-
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a
horse
in the early morning.
Billy Collins
Collins, Billy. “Morning.” Sailing
Alone Around the Room. New York: Random House, 2002. p. 100.
