Reading Nine Horses by Billy Collins

There is something about Billy Collins

when his poetry is put

in a collection, so many pieces of colored glass

.

through which to look,

small ones, though,

all promenaded in front of me.

.

Each little window charmingly

offers me a delightful tinctured glimpse

of the big universal world

.

of little particular things I live in.

But sometimes, when my forehead is

resting on the sheepskin that tops

.

Bernard, the chair that was so big

that it needed a name, with the book

resting on my dog’s curled back,

.

I get greedy or something

and try to look through one poem before

I’ve put the last one down

.

and pretty soon all the tints mix

together until I can’t see through them at all,

just a muddy small blur of glass.

.

Then I have to stop and pick them apart

and if I can slow down enough,

while sitting there next to the dog’s snores,

.

look through them again, but this time

page by page, allowing each poem to stand alone

with the others so that I can see everything again

.

slowly and alive while I scratch the dog’s ears

next to the bird feeder outside the window

that isn’t a poem, but could be.