Kelly likes Billy
UmberDove
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?
from Nine Horses