Poetry Friday: Metropolis by Billy Collins

I haven't joined in on a Poetry Friday in a long time, but today I felt myself wanting to share this gem of a poem that I shared on FB four years ago. I love it when FB reminds me of what I shared, especially when it brings me back around to lovely words like these.

I think one reason I love Billy Collins so much is that he captures so many ordinary kinds of moments, and yet he always adds that one observation or one feeling that makes you catch your breath in wonder and think "oh yes!" or "me too!"

Here's his wonderful meditation on wandering through a museum on a rainy day.

METROPOLIS
by Billy Collins

These are my favorite museum rooms,
the out-of-the-way ones on the upper floors,
usually unpeopled except for a single guard
who appears and disappears in the maze of walls
where these minor American paintings are hung.

I like the calm rustic ones: a surface of lake,
the low bough of an oak like a long arm,
a blue smudge of distant hills,
anything with cows, especially if they are standing
in a stream, their large, vacuous faces
staring into the warm, nineteenth-century afternoon.
And if one has lowered her head to drink
and the painter has indicated with flecks of white
the water pouring down from the animal’s mouth,
then the day, I feel, has achieved a modest crest.

And if it is raining outside that day
and low clouds press down on city buildings
while people under umbrellas climb the marble steps,
I usually find myself in front of the still lifes,
those painstaking devotions to objects,
agreeable possessions laid out on the altar of a table.

The rest of it can be found here at the Billy Collins Facebook page.

The poetry roundup today is at My Juicy Little Universe. Happy reading!