Right now, I'm in love with Billy Collins. I just read his poem, "Canada." You can read it by following this link because it's probably not legal for me to reproduce it here without written permission: Billy Collin's poem, "Canada."
This poem whooshed me back, back to Camp Oolawan in the Eastern Townships when I was 11 and my mother helped in the kitchen so my sisters and I could go to camp even when we couldn't afford it. To the smell of pine and campfire and wet green. Back to Girl Guide camp at Morin Heights, Quebec, with groups named for birds like in Atwood's "Death by Landscape."
Back to hours of reading Cherry Ames' nursing adventures. I remember blue-grey hard-cover books, uninteresting library editions, but oh, how they swallowed me whole.
Although I never had the pack of Sweet Caps on the table, I have heard that train whistle in the night. I've written a letter on a piece of birchbark, mailing it home from camp to my friend, Anne Marie, her mother mad when pieces of bark and pine needles fell out on the carpet, previously immaculate.
That's what poetry does. It lifts and carries. It supports and transports.
Thank you, Billy Collins.
No comments:
Post a Comment