Invention in  General   

Tonight the moon is a cracker,
with a bite out of it
floating in the night,

and in a week or so
according to the calendar
it will probably look

like a silver football,
and nine, maybe ten days ago
it reminded me of a thin bright claw.

But eventually --
by the end of the month,
I reckon --

it will waste away
to nothing,
nothing but stars in the sky,

and I will have a few nights
to myself,
a little time to rest my jittery pen.

By Billy Collins

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Other poems by Billy Collins:

• Candle Hat
• Child Development
• Consolation
• Dear Reader
• Dharma
• Directions
• Fishing On The Susquehanna In July
• Flames
• For Bartleby The Scrivener
• I Ask You
• I Go Back To The House For A Book
• Introduction To Poetry
• Invention
• Japan
• Madmen
• Man Listening To Disc
• Marginalia
• Neither Snow
• Nightclub
• Nostalgia
• On Turning Ten
• Picnic, Lightning
• Pinup
• Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung
• Shoveling Snow With Buddha
• Silence
• Snow Day
• Study In Orange And White
• The Art Of Drowning
• The Best Cigarette
• The First Dream
• The Iron Bridge
• The Only Day In Existence
• Today
• Walking Across The Atlantic