The Example of Monks

I thought I would close out November with a poem I discovered this month. Oh how I love Billy Collins and his sense of sacred in the everyday.  I feel so light and unconcerned by the end of the poem that the weight of the ending almost goes unnoticed. 

November

 

After three days of steady rain -
over two inches said the radio -
I follow the example of monks
who write by a window, sunlight on the page.

 

Five times this morning,
I loaded a wheelbarrow with wood
and steered it down the hill to the house,
and later I will cut down the dead garden

 

with a clippers and haul the soft pulp
to a grave in the woods,
but now there is only
my sunny page which is like a poem

 

I am covering with another poem
and the dog asleep on the tiles,
her head in her paws,
her hind legs played out like a frog.

 

How foolish it is to long for childhood,
to want to run in circles in the yard again,
arms outstretched,
pretending to be an airplane.

 

How senseless to dread whatever lies before us
when, night and day, the boats,
strong as horses in the wind,
come and go,

 

bringing in the tiny infants
and carrying away the bodies of the dead.

 

-Billy Collins