This Is One Of Those Poems

Every morning before leaving for work, my routine includes reading at least one poem, and when I'm very lucky, it will move me in such a way I know I will think about it throughout the day. This is one of those poems:

My Life
by Billy Collins

Sometimes I see it as a straight line
drawn with a pencil and a ruler
transcending the circle of the world

or as a finger piercing
a smoke ring, casual, inquisitive,

but then the sun will come out
or the phone will ring
and I will cease to wonder

if it is one thing,
a large ball of air and memory,
or many things,
a string of small farming towns,
a dark road winding through them.

Let us say it is a field
I have been hoeing every day,
hoeing and singing,
then going to sleep in one of its furrows,

or now that it is more than half over
a partially open door,
rain dripping from the eaves.

Like yours, it could be anything,
a nest with one egg,
a hallway that leads to a thousand rooms --
whatever happens to float into view
when I close my eyes

or look out a window
for more than a few minutes,
so that some days I think
it must be everything and nothing at once.

But this morning, sitting up in bed,
wearing my black sweater and my glasses,
the curtains drawn and the windows up,
I am a lake, my poem is an empty boat,
and my life is the breeze that blows
through the whole scene

stirring everything it touches --
the surface of the water, the limp sail,
even the heavy, leafy trees along the shore.