The Next Billy Collins

I stood at the window, like all good poets do with a pen, paper and passion.

And If I’d be Billy I’d tell you exactly which dead fly was on the sill,

If it were on his stomach or back

And what shape the stains on the glass were.

I’d continue with the droopy- eared peels of paint around the windows face

(and cut the sentence somewhere in the middle)

And how the fly on the other side buzzed around my eye

As if he wanted an eye-to-eye conversation.

But I’m not Billy Collins;

I’m just an amateur poet standing by the window

Trying to think like Billy Collins;

To see something else in every something

and worlds in every microscopic speck;

To take apart the strings of every woven thing

And ponder the kinetics between them

Then take that grinded flattened tree

Beaten till white and empty

And tell the thin blue lines, the entire story.

I want to be Billy Collins.

So, I stand at the window, like all good poets do

And if I stand there long enough

I will be the next Billy Collins.