A Poem for a Thursday #254

Some weeks I like to discover a poet I have never read before. Some weeks I love the joy of something new and the jolt of recognition when you read words that resonate. Then there are some weeks when I just want to read something by one of the poets I have discovered in the five years I have been featuring poetry. This is a week when I felt like reading the tried and true. Therefore, please enjoy a poem by Billy Collins. I have yet to find a poem of his that I don’t like.

Also, I am very aware that this blog has been heavy on poetry posts and light on pretty much everything else for a few months now. I have been dealing with some (not serious) health issues and recovering from some routine surgery. Hopefully, now that I am feeling better I will have the energy to devote to writing again. I have missed it. Thanks for sticking around when there hasn’t been much to see here.

You can have Egypt and Nantucket.
The only place I want to visit is The Blue,
not the Wild Blue Yonder that seduces pilots,
but that zone where the unexected dwells,
waiting to come out of it in the shape of bolts.

I want to walk its azure perimeter
where the unanticipated is coiled, on the mark,
ready to spring into the predictable homes of earth.

I want to stroll through the pale indigo of light
examining all the accidents about to rocket into time,
all the forgotten names about to fly from tongues.

I will scrutinize all the surprises of the future
and watch the brainstorms gathering darkly,
ready to hit the heads of inventors
laboring in their crackpot shacks.

A jaded traveler with an invisible passport,
I am at home in this heaven of the unforeseen
waiting for the next whoosh of sudden departure
when, with no advance warning, no tiny augery,
the unpredictable plummets into our lives
from somewhere that looks like sky.

The Blue
Billy Collins