July 12: "I Ask You," Calumet, Veterans

Billy Collins finds some peace . . .

I Ask You

by: Billy Collins

What scene would I rather be enveloped in

than this one,

an ordinary night at the kitchen table,

at ease in a box of floral wallpaper,

white cabinets full of glass,

the telephone silent,

a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think

about the leaves gathering in corners,

lichen greening the high gray rocks,

and the world sailing on beyond the dunes--

huge, oceangoing, history bubbling it its wake.

Outside of this room

there is nothing that I need,

not a job that would allow me to row to work,

or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4

with cracked green leather seats.

No, it is all right here,

the clear ovals of a glass of water,

a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,

an odd snarling fish in a frame on the wall,

and these three candles,

each a different height, singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me

if I lower my head and listen

to the short bass candle as he takes a solo

while my heart

thrums under my shirt--

frog at the edge of a pond--

and my thoughts fly off to a province

composed of one enormous sky

and about a million empty branches.

This poem is about nothing much.  A crate of oranges.  A pen.  Burning candles.  Yet, it's also a poem of profound depth.  One enormous sky filled with a million empty branches.  

I think we've all probably experienced moments like the one Collins is describing.  Static and tranquil, they fill you with a sense of how small you are in a vast and beautiful universe.  The smallness isn't a bad thing.  It simply puts everything into perspective.

Greetings from Calumet, Michigan.  I rolled into town around 7 p.m., checked into my hotel, and immediately went to a rehearsal for the show in which I'm performing tomorrow night--The Red Jacket Jamboree.  When I got back to the hotel, my wife and I took a walk around the downtown area.  

I've been a part of the regular cast of this show for over seven years now.  What started out as a fun diversion in December 2017--an invitation to read some poems on a radio variety show--has become an important part of my life.  The Red Jacket performers and musicians have become family to me.

One of the things Calumet does every summer is hang banners on the light posts of the main thoroughfares.  The banners display pictures of and details about the city's military veterans, from World War I to Afghanistan.  I find the displays incredibly moving.  These individuals from a tiny hamlet in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan changed the world.  Some came home.  Some did not.

On our walk this evening, my wife and I stopped under each banner, read them, studied the young faces (most of them look like babies).  I'm sure none of these people considered themselves special or heroic.  They were simply Johnny and Jane from the Keweenaw Peninsula.  Yet, they put themselves in harm's way to fight for a cause in which they believed.  

Something small (a frog at the edge of a pond) becoming something large (an enormous sky filled with a million branches).

Saint Marty is so thankful for the sacrifices of all of the veterans from all the Calumets across the planet.