Canada

[Posted in honor of Canada Day]

I am writing this on a strip of white birch bark

that I cut from a tree with a penknife.

There is no other way to express adequately

the immensity of the clouds that are passing over the farms   

and wooded lakes of Ontario and the endless visibility   

that hands you the horizon on a platter.

I am also writing this in a wooden canoe,

a point of balance in the middle of Lake Couchiching,   

resting the birch bark against my knees.   

I can feel the sun’s hands on my bare back,   

but I am thinking of winter,

snow piled up in all the provinces

and the solemnity of the long grain-ships

that pass the cold months moored at Owen Sound.

O Canada, as the anthem goes,

scene of my boyhood summers,

you are the pack of Sweet Caporals on the table,   

you are the dove-soft train whistle in the night,

you are the empty chair at the end of an empty dock.   

You are the shelves of books in a lakeside cottage:   

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh,   

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson,   

Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery,

So You’re Going to Paris! by Clara E. Laughlin,

and Peril Over the Airport, one

of the Vicky Barr Flight Stewardess series

by Helen Wills whom some will remember

as the author of the Cherry Ames Nurse stories.

What has become of the languorous girls

who would pass the long limp summer evenings reading

Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse,   

Cherry Ames, Chief Nurse, and Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse?

Where are they now, the ones who shared her adventures   

as a veterans’ nurse, private duty nurse, visiting nurse,   

cruise nurse, night supervisor, mountaineer nurse,   

dude ranch nurse (there is little she has not done),   

rest home nurse, department store nurse,   

boarding school nurse, and country doctor's nurse?

O Canada, I have not forgotten you,

and as I kneel in my canoe, beholding this vision   

of a bookcase, I pray that I remain in your vast,

polar, North American memory.

You are the paddle, the snowshoe, the cabin in the pines.   

You are Jean de Brébeuf with his martyr’s necklace of hatchet heads.

You are the moose in the clearing and the moosehead on the wall.

You are the rapids, the propeller, the kerosene lamp.   

You are the dust that coats the roadside berries.   

But not only that.

You are the two boys with pails walking along that road,   

and one of them, the taller one minus the straw hat, is me.

--Billy Collins

[Photo of visiting my grandfather's birthplace in Almonte, Ontario with my mother in 1992]. 

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now

I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now. – Mary Oliver

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the children, who don’t realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads toward me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you
may wear,
I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.
I bet everybody in your pub
even the children, pushes her away.

--Billy Collins

[Photo of Trekker and Tsali walking in the rain.]

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

--

Billy Collins

Morning

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—

maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins—
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,

and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.

--Billy Collins

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

--Billy Collins

In the Evening

The heads of roses begin to droop

The bee who has been hauling her gold

all day finds a hexagon in which to rest.

In the Sky, traces of clouds,

the last few darting birds,

watercolors on the horizon.

The white cat sits facing a wall.

The horse in the field is asleep on its feet.

I light a candle on the wood table.

I take a sip of wine.

I pick up an onion and a knife.

And the past and the future?

Nothing but an only child with two different masks.

--Billy Collins

The Chairs That No One Sits In

You see them on porches and on lawns

down by the lakeside,

usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

who might sit there and look out

at the water or the big shade trees.

The trouble is you never see anyone

sitting in these forlorn chairs

though at one time it must have seemed   

a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

Sometimes there is a little table

between the chairs where no one   

is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

It might be none of my business,

but it might be a good idea one day

for everyone who placed those vacant chairs

on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them

for the sake of remembering

whatever it was they thought deserved

to be viewed from two chairs   

side by side with a table in between.

The clouds are high and massive that day.

The woman looks up from her book.

The man takes a sip of his drink.

Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird

then another, cries of joy or warning—

it passes the time to wonder which.

--Billy Collins