"Brown hens standing in the rain"

Billy Collins , rupi kaur & a lovenote to keep creating.

Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash

The Student

by Billy Collins

My poetry instruction book, which I bought at an outdoor stall along the river, contains many rules about what to avoid and what to follow.

More than two people in a poem, is a crowd, is one.

Mention what clothes you are wearing as you compose, is another.

Avoid the word vortex the word velvety, and the word cicada.

When at a loss for an ending, have some brown hens standing in the rain.

Never admit that you revise. And — always keep your poem in season.

I try to be mindful, but in these last days of summer

whenever I look up from the page and see burn-mark yellow leaves,

I think of the icy winds that will soon be knifing through my jacket.

---

Can’t you see him, wrestling with expectations and then drifting towards the magnificence of Nature’s splendor. The call of the artist to create what is relatable, perhaps be acknowledged for it — and yet ever beckoned by the beauty that surrounds us.

Torn between expectation and inspiration.

and, I have one more to share….

Photo by Nicole Wilcox on Unsplash

You, Reader

by Billy Collins

I wonder how you are going to feel

when you find out

that I wrote this instead of you.

that it was I who got up early

to sit in the kitchen

and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,

the ivy wallpaper,

and the goldfish circling its bowl.

Go ahead and turn aside,

bite your lip and tear out the page,

but, listen –it was just a matter of time

before one us happened

to notice the unlit candles

and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning —

a song on the radio,

a car whistling along the road outside—

and I was only thinking

about the shakers of salt and pepper

that were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends

after all these years

or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I

who manage to be known and unknown

to each other at the same time―

me at this table with a bowl of pears,

you leaning in a doorway somewhere

near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

---

When we Sit to write, or gather the words of another, time slows, the breath elongates and we drop in. It’s not the same passivity of scrolling; somehow that flat page reaches through time and space and we pluck from forward or backward in the moment. The author, the poet, can see us standing there and stack

the words

just

so,

so that

we too

can feel seen.

Keep writing, in your journal, on your child’s lunch note, or on the pages of your manuscript. As the world quickens, be one of the ones opening and cultivating our connections to the natural, endless rhythms that surround us. Now to the rules, such that the become foundations for your own creation.

Kate

---

the orange trees refused to blossom

unless we bloomed first

when we met

they wept tangerines

can’t you tell

the earth has waited its whole life for this.

— celebration

rupi kaur