Child Development

by Billy Collins


As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.

They are just tormenting their fellow squirts
or going after the attention of the giants
way up there with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense to other giants,
waiting to call them names after thanking
them for the lovely party and hearing the door close.

The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.

Death Wish

My death was a glorious place.
It’s a shame I can’t rush to get to it any longer,
but I’ve got things to do.

My death was a home,
a nice place to curl up and read a book.
It had a fireplace, but you never had to turn it on.
It was perpetual fall outside,
and the room’s window was large,
picturesque,
and easy to open.

Sometimes I would roam outside
among you,
a whistling specter,
enjoying the fresh air
and foliage

and occasionally
I would
pat you on the ass
for fun.

The Pied Piper’s Wife, the Painter

My husband is Peter the Piper.
Finer man I could not chose.
Though most of the time
he’s off with the mice,
he’s not a man I’ll lose.

And he caught me
with the same sad tune
about a year and a half ago.
At first the song
was one I could dance to
and then it grew soft and low.

For Peter’s a man
who will play his whistles
until you follow him home.
And the time when I left
he ran from the music,
chased me
and carried me home.

The mice can’t get enough of him
with his whistles so soft and low.
But since no one but me
has heard him speak
there’s plenty they’ll never know.

I have married the musician.
He is an artist’s dream.
And this evening while he’s off with the mice
I’ll paint pictures he’ll never see.

European Vacation

Trapped in a car on the wrong hand side
with a woman he thought he knew.
She was a good woman,
though one often testy,
but on this day
his patience was through.

She had planned to drive them
from Dublin to Cork
in three hours and a half,
but realizing she’d left
their vouchers in Dublin
they had to drive all the way back.

“How long before we turn out the light?”
she asked that night at the B&B.
“Well, it doesn’t much matter
to me anyway,
in honesty,” said he.

“What do you mean?
It doesn’t matter?
Time is running out.
We have bills to pay,
meals to eat,
hundreds of miles,
thousands of feet
to cover before
we’re in it knee deep.
Now when do we wake,
and when do we sleep?”

And he said, “Sleep
when you must.
Time’s what we keep
or what we should lose
or when we should sleep.
So turn out the light
or just let it be.
For if you can’t let go now
then you won’t let go then.
So why not let us go
back off to bed?
And if the thorn of a rose
is the thorn in your side,
then you’re better off dead,
if you haven’t yet died.”

And then he suddenly
started to cry,
and she held him there,
and she turned out the light.

Thank You Letter to My Employer

You have always been such a patient employer.
I could never complain that you paid nothing.
No other job has ever made me feel so useful.
You never told me
I was too old for the position
or not old enough.
I was not hired or fired
for my education
or the length of my skirt.

Even when I began working for you
cliché with daggers through my bleeding heart
and red all around,
you told me it perfect
because it was real for the time.

You told me that my best ideas come
when lying down
just about to sleep
or on vacation
or sitting around
mulling over the stars.
And like me
you distrusted dress codes
and cubicles.
We were a perfect fit.

Then amazingly
you didn’t punish me
or even mind
when I just didn’t show up for work
for 5 years
too busy with another job
or my education
or a boyfriend
or children.
In fact, you offered me a raise,
celebrating these events
as experiences to be used
for career advancement,
should I ever choose
to return to work for you.

And I did.
I had to, of course.
There wasn’t much else that compared
or, truth be known, much else I could do.
You spoiled me.

The Paper Nautilus

by Marianne Moore

For authorities whose hopes
are shaped by mercenaries?
Writers entrapped by
teatime fame and by
commuters' comforts? Not for these
the paper nautilus
constructs her thin glass shell.

Giving her perishable
souvenir of hope, a dull
white outside and smooth-
edged inner surface
glossy as the sea, the watchful
maker of it guards it
day and night; she scarcely

eats until the eggs are hatched.
Buried eight-fold in her eight
arms, for she is in
a sense a devil-
fish, her glass ram'shorn-cradled freight
is hid but is not crushed;
as Hercules, bitten

by a crab loyal to the hydra,
was hindered to succeed,
the intensively
watched eggs coming from
the shell free it when they are freed,--
leaving its wasp-nest flaws
of white on white, and close-

laid Ionic chiton-folds
like the lines in the mane of
a Parthenon horse,
round which the arms had
wound themselves as if they knew love
is the only fortress
strong enough to trust to.

Fishing in the Sea

You remember the night.
I was dressed up in the costume
with the fishnets.
I might have settled for crabs,
but instead
I caught you,
another fish in the sea.

I really didn’t plan it out.
Didn’t mean for it to turn out this way.
And I don’t mean to sound unromantic,
but I have no idea why we’re still together.

Still I must admit, it was a cheap beginning.
As a young girl I probably didn’t imagine
meeting my future husband that way.
But maybe there was something about my lopsided cap
or the run in my stockings
or maybe you just felt some softer skin
that made you think
you’d struck human.

Anyway, while I was fishing
for crabs
I instead found an oyster.
Painfully shy, you stuck around.
I was never sure why.
And you would crack open your shell
every now and again
for a moment or two
and in spite of me
you saw our future
and the world
as open and as perfect and smooth
as sand
and you gulped it in
and let the residue of everything
sit in your stomach for six years.

And then one day
for no particular reason
you opened wide
and popped out a pearl
and it landed in the hollow in my neck
between my collarbones.

I believe that ignorance is bliss.
I don’t believe that bliss is in your kiss
or in you
or even me
but in how we keep shifting
and growing
with the universe
and accepting that
there is really no reason
for us to have met
or to have stayed together.
And that there is really no answer
for why we’re here at all
unless we make one.

And we did
one night
when I wasn’t doing
much of anything
except fishing
in the sea.