As if to Demonstrate an Eclipse --- Billy Collins

My Christology prof read this at the beginning of class the other day, and I very much enjoyed it. Pretty much everyone was busting up laughing at the thought. Some night I will live this poem.

I pick an orange from a wicker basket

and place it on the table

to represent the sun.

Then down at the other end a blue and white marble becomes the earth

and nearby I lay

the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet

open a bottle of wine,

then I sit in a ladder-back chair,

a benevolent god presiding

over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing

a home canticle of thanks

for this perfect little arrangement,

for not making the earth too hot or cold

not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees

and the owl become possible,

not to mention the rolling wave,

the play of clouds, geese in flight,

and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again

and give thanks for the trout,

the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows,

as sun and earth and moon

circle one another in their impeccable orbits

and I get more and more cockeyed

with gratitude.