I'm feeling decidedly mean. I love dipping into the blogs I follow and keeping up with the lives and interests of their authors and feel suddenly miserable that I've been so lax in contributing to this great world of blogging of late. As I'm about to begin my summer hols soon I'll rectify that in the not-too-distant future. Meanwhile, I'm lazily offering some of anothers hard graft, to whit a poem by one of my favourite poets, Billy Collins. Last week and weekend the weather was splendid; hot, sunny - provoking lazy days in the garden and activity filled picnics on the gorgeous local beaches. For the past few days it's been raining and cool and all of us locals are bemoaning the change in climes - yes, the conversation at the hairdressers today revolved around the well founded Irish paranoia that we've had our summer already, and this could be it for the rest of the so-called summer, whilst we remain hopelessly optimistic that "things will pick up again"....and we'll be rescued from our fears once more!!! The rain once diverted Billy Collins thoughts into less sanguine channels before he allowed the possibility of a return to better weather to again claim his allegiance for this earthly realm....
Rooms
After three days of steady, inconsolable rain,
I walk through the rooms of the house
wondering which would be best to die in.
The study is an obvious choice
with its thick carpet and soothing paint,
its overstuffed chair preferable
to a doll-like tumble down the basement stairs.
And the kitchen has a certain appeal -
it seems he was boiling water for tea,
the inspector will offer, holding up the melted kettle.
Then there is the dining room,
just the place to end up facedown
at one end of its long table in a half-written letter
or the bedroom with its mix of sex and sleep,
upright against a headboard,
a book having slipped to the floor -
make it Mrs. Dalloway, which I have yet to read.
Dead on the carpet, dead on the tiles,
dead on the stone cold floor -
it's starting to sound like a ballad
sung by a man in a pub with a coal red face.
It's all the fault of the freezing rain
which is flicking against the windows,
but when it finally lets up
and gives way to broken clouds and a warm breeze,
when the trees stand dripping in the light,
I will quit these dark, angular rooms
and drive along a country road
into the larger rooms of the world,
so vast and speckled, so full of ink and sorrow-
a road that cuts through bare woods
and tangles of red and yellow bittersweet
these late November days.
And maybe under the fallen wayside leaves
there is hidden a nest of mice,
each one no bigger than a thumb,
a thumb with closed eyes,
a thumb with whiskers and a tail,
each one contemplating the sweetness of grass
and the startling brevity of life.
And he wrote that poem in November - this is June!!!
