Love by Billy Collins
Love
by Billy Collins
The boy at the far end of the train car kept looking behind him
as if he were afraid or expecting someone
and then she appeared in the glass door of the forward car and he rose and opened the door and let her in
and she entered the car carrying a large black case
in the unmistakable shape of a cello.
She looked like an angel with a high forehead and somber eyes and her hair was tied up behind her neck with a black bow.
And because of all that, he seemed a little awkward in his happiness to see her,
whereas she was simply there, perfectly existing as a creature with a soft face who played the cello.
And the reason I am writing this on the back of a manila envelope now that they have left the train together
is to tell you that when she turned to lift the large, delicate cello onto the overhead rack,
I saw him looking up at her and what she was doing
the way the eyes of saints are painted
when they are looking up at God when he is doing something remarkable,
something that identifies him as God.
This is such an experiential poem, this caught moment of witnessing of a boy waiting on a train for a girl, and the small ordinary is part of what Billy Collins does so beautifully — turns a moment of deep recognition into something more.
Billy Collins (born 1941) was U.S. Poet Laureate 2001–2003 and is one of the most widely read American poets of the last thirty years.
Collins, Love. From The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (Random House, 2005).
