Billy Collins Writes a Poem

I could have sworn I saw him sitting there,
sitting calmly in his white writing lair.
Books neatly arranged, pens and paper too,
shushed words once rousted awaiting their debut.

He fingers a button on his sweater,
reminding him of a childhood winter.
Remembering, yes, he was turning ten.
On a snowy trail, he found a brown wren.

His hands, amnions, inside his blue vest,
hoping it would feel like a mother’s nest,
he ran the way home in his sturdy shoes,
the brown wren eupneic, in repose.

He looks out the window listening to Mingus,
picks up his pen and starts his first sentence.
It’s not about the wren or turning ten.
He’s writing about his mother again.

Seeing her now in her black wool crepe dress
giving his father a relinquished caress.
While sitting in his cherished paisley chair,
the son looking on, the silent steward.

It was then he realized how he was bound
to writing about her eyes tightly wound.
The dangling gray glance she gave him when
he proudly showed her the brown winter wren.

If he could not make her happy, then who?
Writing about this for years now to hew
a cenotaph of a son’s love at ten
to make up for the love of lesser men.

Debra McLaughlin