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.

Every Life Is A Story

Writers sometimes read others' work and think, "I wish I had written that," or "If only I could write like that."

Blue Iris, the title poem of a book of poetry and essays by Mary Oliver, is an example of one of those wishful moments of mine. It begins rather simply and, if it were a story, we might say it has a surprise ending. But, as I think about it a moment, poems are stories.  Our lives are stories. And if every life is a story, perhaps every life can be a poem.

Blue Iris

by Mary Oliver

Now that I'm free to be myself, who am I?

Can't fly, can't run, and see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

     "What's that you're doing?"

the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

"What's that you're doing?" whispers the wind, pausing

in a heap just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face.

It doesn't happen all of a sudden, you know.

"Doesn't it?" says the wind, and breaks open, releasing

distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,

the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.