The Only Day In Existence in  General  General   

The early sun is so pale and shadowy,
I could be looking up at a ghost
in the shape of a window,
a tall, rectangular spirit
looking down at me in bed,
about to demand that I avenge
the murder of my father.
But the morning light is only the first line
in the play of this day--
the only day in existence--
the opening chord of its long song,
or think of what is permeating
the thin bedroom curtains

as the beginning of a lecture
I will listen to until it is dark,
a curious student in a V-neck sweater,
angled into the wooden chair of his life,
ready with notebook and a chewed-up pencil,
quiet as a goldfish in winter,
serious as a compass at sea,
eager to absorb whatever lesson
this damp, overcast Tuesday
has to teach me,
here in the spacious classroom of the world
with its long walls of glass,
its heavy, low-hung ceiling.

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