I Am an English Teacher and You Are My Robert Frost

On February 6, 2009 I found myself crying over my lunch.  Seriously, crying.  It is not that the lunch was bad; in fact, it was really quite good…

 

Lunch

 

Lunch was salad,

tossed

on the table

by a man

with kind eyes

and cold tea.

 

Any weekday a teacher actually eats lunch is worth celebrating, but I cried over this particular lunch on this particular day because…

 

Today I Ate Lunch with Billy Collins

 

Today I ate lunch with Billy Collins alone

just the two of us in a room with four hundred others

he at table one, me at table thirty-five listening

intently when he ascended to the podium and read

 

the words of his poems, poems that are not abandoned

but finished; begun from small fragments of thoughts

found wandering through his mind in cafes in Paris

floating in water under the bridge or arriving with wind

 

just as poets parachute to earth born fully as adults

who write of tension and Monday and most of all lanyards

and how only one angel can dance on the head of a pin

and sit alone with me, just the two of us today at lunch.

 

OMG!  You will not believe what Billy Collins said had happened to him as a young man who loved poetry more than any other single, solitary act…

 

Billy Collins Said…Oh, My God!

 

Billy Collins said

when he was in school

he ate dinner once 

with Robert Frost,

and all he could do

was keep his eyes

in his soup and try

to avoid staring

as Frost talked

with Jesuit teachers

at his high school

in New York.

.

And now I can say

I am a non-Jesuit

high school teacher

who stared at Billy Collins

and not her salad once

when Collins said

he stared at soup

instead of Robert Frost,

and then uttered mentally

the religious devotion

so bemusing to Collins,

Oh, My God!

 

Not one magical word escaped me as he spoke, but one word took my breath away.  Was it chance that he used my all-time favorite word when he spoke? No…

 

It Was Not Chance

 

It was not chance

that Billy Collins used

my favorite word

when he spoke at lunch

while the salt stood

next to the pepper,

the crystal goblet

with ice lingering

and the butter knife,

 

cut to the chase

was what he did

as he told of

his love affair

with poetry, walking

through the halls

of high school

as a boy with poems

in his pockets

and a goal to look

like Edgar Allan Poe.

 

It was for me a moment

of profound recognition,

for I often wondered

what it would be like

to be Emily Dickinson

In high school walking

nowhere because of that

suffocating agoraphobia

and those flies buzzing

when I died—because

he said my favorite word

and it was truly

epiphanic.

 

There was illumination in the day and magic in my soul as I excitedly awaited my turn in line to have Billy Collins sign one of my worn copies of his words before leaving.  I found myself overwhelmed, my heart racing, what if I have…

 

Nothing Good to Say?

 

And so what would I say

to this man Billy Collins,

whom I had so long admired

had so often read

kept on my desk

in my classroom

on my bedside table

tucked in suitcases

folded on my lap

embraced, with tears

welling In my eyes

standing in line

to meet him?

 

“I am an English teacher,

and you are my Robert Frost.”