The Pencil

I held the pencil so lightly today
it fell from my hand
before I could write a thing

and it dropped to the floor
the way a cigarette
drops from the hand of a sleeper

so that the boarding house
which was to have been a poem
burned to the ground,

all the words dashing
into the snowy streets
in their flaming nightgowns.

Copyright © 2009 Billy Collins All rights reserved
from 32 Poems
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission