Fishing

One good poem about home deserves another, albeit completely different in mood and tone. Home here, though, is not a distant inevitability but a present and mundane reality. It’s where a poet works and dreams.

Billy Collins is that rarest of poets, funny and widely read.

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--
of fishing on the Susquehanna...

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one--
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table--
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

Tags: Billy Collins, home