National Poetry Month

So April is National Poetry Month. Who knew? Maybe May is National Prose Month; and June is National Newspaper Month (Hurry, by June 2009 all hard copy newspapers will have declared bankruptcy).

I was going to start off by a poem by CS Lewis, but today is April Fools' Day. So I thought of my new favorite poet Billy Collins, who's as much Steven Wright as he is a poet. most of his poems make me giggle. So here's one I love of Billy's.

The Country
by Billy Collins

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?