NaPoWriMo - day twenty nine

choir

standing on the bleachers,

getting ready to sing,

my youngest son looks out

at the gathered crowd,

searching for me

while i try to catch his attention

to let him know i am here.

his eyes lock onto my eyes

locking onto his eyes

and a smile brightens his face.

he waves eagerly

as he sees me

seeing him.

was i like that as a boy?

i don’t remember.

all i know is my son

will know my eyes are on him,

he brings me great joy,

his smile is my smile.

i will be this father:

he will walk in the knowledge

that he blesses me.

i will bless him

with both hands.

i will bless him

with words of life.

i will bless him

with joy, and he will know

he is my song.

Monday by Billy Collins - NPM29

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth-
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see-
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlight of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare
at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think-
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.

Collins, Billy "Monday" The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 2005. 7-8.