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Billy Collins was born 83 years ago, on March 22, 1941. I don't know a lot about him (I've made avoidance of modern poets a hallmark of my literary experience), but he was beloved of a dear friend of mine and--on occasion--I can see why.
Above all else, Collins's poetry was accessible. Sometimes funny. Heartwarming, and heartbreaking. This one in particular (full poem at this link), last stanza:
After I carried the mouse by the tail to a pile of leaves in the woods, I found myself standing at the bathroom sink gazing down affectionately at the soap.
God. If I had a dollar for each time I've stood at the bathroom sink gazing down affectionately at the soap. Whether my intention was to wash away my own sins or to disinfect the sins of others; or to cleanse the nasty fallout from a bad lambing, a tractoring disaster, or another farm mishap; or if it was simply to deliver me from my regrettable tendency to circle the drain and find myself unable to move on from an unpleasant situation that had gone sideways through no fault of my own.
And yet.
This is the best kind of love, I thought, Without recompense, without gifts, or unkind words, without suspicion, or silence on the telephone.
Love which cannot be wasted. Love which cannot be killed.
Not-so-aimless love.
Discussion (31)
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With some trepidation I pressed on past "modern poet". Once you get past Ogden Nash, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, and John Gardner (Jason and Medea, two kids kicking back and having a good time in epic fashion), things start to go south. I knew you posted this for a reason, though, and you usually pay off. Bottle feeding a lamb nine days before Easter?
Well played. The soap works, too.
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Several years ago, Mr. She and I endured a severe mouse infestation in the house. Long story, never mind why. Perhaps I'll tell it elsewhere, sometime. Because it is quite amusing. Still, two recollections:
One had to do with my washing machine, which--along with the dryer--was in the bathroom at the time. It was a front-loader, computerized. Over a year or so (during the infestation), one cycle after another cut out and stopped working. Eventually, even I had to take notice.
So I took the machine apart to discover that the motherboard (because it was mostly a computer) had been fried by the little b******s chewing through the wires (discovered a couple of them fried and dead along the way). That wasn't the half of it though. Below the fold, on the next level down, I discovered that they'd been stealing the Q-Tips out of the glass jars on my bathroom shelves, carrying the sticks with cotton wads on the ends (think Stonehenge Kit, the Ancient Brit) to their destination, peeling off the cotton to make nests, and throwing the sticks away. Hundreds of them. Mouse nests. Dead mice. Flung away sticks. Ugh.
Sorted all that. Got a new motherboard. Wired it up. Duct taped the lids of (washed) cat food tins over any possible entry points on the back of the washing machine that clueless other mice might try to infiltrate.
Fixed!
The other remembrance I have (from the same time period) is of parking myself on the bathroom "throne" one day, and of Xena (one of my Great Pyrenees) coming to sit before me. "What on earth is going on?" I thought, as I watched her twitchy mouth which wriggled from side to side.
Turns out that she was (as her breed is famous for) saving the weak.
I grabbed her, took her outside, opened her mouth and allowed the mouse she'd been protecting to escape.
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She! I was wondering where you were. I was afraid that you had fallen into a cistern or something.
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Thanks. No such luck. I'm still here. No cisterns in my immediate vicinity. Just a well.
So, well....
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I don't think that I have ever gazed affectionately at soap, but I appreciate having the use of it when needed. The love of which the poet writes sounds more like an infatuation to me. I suppose that is why I am not a poet.
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