Dear Reader Poem by Billy Collins

Sometimes elegance is saying something simply

Baudelaire considers you his brother, and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to make sure you have not closed the book, and now I am summoning you up again, attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing in the doorway of these words. Pope welcomes you into the glow of his study, takes down a leather-bound Ovid to show you. Tennyson lifts the latch to a moated garden, and with Yeats you lean against a broken pear tree, the day hooded by low clouds. But now you are here with me, composed in the open field of this page, no room or manicured garden to enclose us, no Zeitgeist marching in the background, no heavy ethos thrown over us like a cloak. Instead, our meeting is so brief and accidental, unnoticed by the monocled eye of History, you could be the man I held the door for this morning at the bank or post office or the one who wrapped my speckled fish. You could be someone I passed on the street or the face behind the wheel of an oncoming car. The sunlight flashes off your windshield, and when I look up into the small, posted mirror, I watch you diminish—my echo, my twin— and vanish around a curve in this whip of a road we can't help traveling together.

Baudelaire had purpose in each of his poem. I don't see your purpose here?

CONGRATULATIONS for YOU, dear Billy You are chosen (again) by Poem Hunter and Team as The Modern Poem Of The Day, hooray! ! And this Prose poem is a very attentive reading for us as readers. Very poetically created. Be happy, dear Billy Enjoy today. God's Blessings

Dark and beautiful. Oh so the two guys are poets? Dont know them.

CONGRATULATIONS Professor Collins being chosen by PoemHunter as The Modern Poem Of The Day for the THIRD time. Fantastic!

I find Collins' poem rather touching. He knows that he needs a reader to complete him and his craft. More than that, he knows that these relationships are often anonymous. Excellent Modern Poem Of The Day, Professor Collins! 5 Stars Topscore and myriad more!

Congrats on your poem's selection as modern poem of the day.

Baudelaire called the readers like brothers/sisters Fielding called the readers to justify where they read out this or not But Collins called the readers to certify as if they become so studious that after death the skeletons shall be eager to read the same! ! ! - just joking! ! !

Musing along! ! ! With a book to read. Thanks for sharing this poem with us.