the gods of wind and sun

Of the many poetry books I own, Billy Collins's Ballistics is one of my favorites. It's a fantastic collection, and my copy is peppered with post-it notes. This poem was not, in fact, marked by a post-it from previous reading, but I think it's the right poem for me today.

With only a two-and-a-half-inch wooden goose
to keep me company at this desk,
I am beginning a new life of discipline.

No more wandering out in thunderstorms
hoping to be hit by a bolt of lightning
from the raised hand of Randall Jarrell.

No more standing at an open window
with my lyre strings finely tuned
waiting for a stray zephyr to blow my way.

Instead I will report here every morning
and bend over my work like St. Jerome
with his cowl, quill, and a skull for a paperweight.

And the small white goose with his yellow
feet and beak and a black dot for an eye
is more than enough companionship for me.

He is well worth the dollar I paid for him
in a roadside trinket shop in New Mexico
and more familiar to me than the household deities

of this guest cottage in the woods—
two porcelain sphinxes on the mantel
and a pale, blank-eyed Roman bust on a high shelf

on this first morning without you—
me holding a coffee I forgot to pay for
and the gods of wind and sun contending in the
     crowded trees.

—Billy Collins (b. 1941), "Separation," from Ballistics (2008).