November 4th: I am Thankful for Billy Collins

 When I have had a long day which involves school work, teaching, and conferences with parents I love to come home and read poetry. The shorter text of poetry works well for me when my brain is worn out. Tonight I read Billy Collins. He always strikes a chord with me. I shared recently with elementary children my first reading experiences. I did learn with Dick, Jane, Sally and Spot. I love his message here. Sometimes we do forget to look.

           First Reader

I can see them standing politely on the wide pages
that I was still learning to turn
Jane in a blue jumper, Dick with his crayon brown hair,
playing with a ball or exploring the cosmos
of the backyard, unaware they are the first characters,
the boy and the girl who begin fiction.

Beyond the simple illustration of their neighborhood
the other protagonists were waiting in a huddle:
frightening Heathcliff, frightened Pip, Nick Adams
carrying a fishing rod, Emma Bovary riding into Rouen.

But I would read about the perfect boy and his sister
even before I would read about Adam and Eve, garden and gate,
and before I heard the name Gutenberg, the type
of their simple talk was moving into my focusing eyes.

It was always Saturday and he and she
were always pointing at something and shouting “Look!”
pointing at the dog, the bicycle, or at their father
as he pushed a hand mower over the lawn,
waving at aproned Mother framed in the kitchen doorway,
pointing toward the sky, pointing at each other.

They wanted us to look but we had looked already
and seen the shaded lawn, the wagon, the postman.
We had seen the dog, walked, watered and fed the animal,
and now it was time to discover the infinite, clicking
permutations of the alphabet’s small and capital letters.
Alphabetical ourselves in the rows of classroom desks,
we were forgetting how to look, learning how to read.

from Sailing Alone Around the Room, copyright 2001 by Billy Collins