Kelly likes Billy

I have a new crush.  His name is Billy.  I keep sneaking off for quick rendezvous in the afternoon when I'm supposedly working and slipping in just a few minutes with him just before bed.  

Did I mention he's a poet?

And just to be truthful, I've never met him, only his books, but I am infatuated with his stories.  So I thought, on this rather melancholy Tuesday that we were all in need of a spot of poetry, especially one to grin and snort over (which I do every time I read this particular one).  

The Country

I wondered about you

when you told me never to leave

a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches

lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.

But your face was absolutely straight

when you twisted the lid down on the round tin

where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?

Who could whisk away the thought

of the one unlikely mouse

padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper

gripping a single wooden match 

between the needles of his teeth?

Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,

the sudden flare, and the creature

for one bright, shining moment

suddenly thrust ahead of his time - 

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer

in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid

illuminating some ancient night

Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,

the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces

of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants

of what once was your house in the country?

- Billy Collins

from Nine Horses