September 16: "Genius," Boiling Point of Coal Tar, Sea of Tranquility

I'm not a genius.

I want to get that out of the way first.  Do I think I'm smart?  Yes, I do.  However, I can't change the oil on my car.  Don't know how to drive a stick shift.  Stay up way too late every night.  If you ask me what the boiling point of coal tar is, I wouldn't be able to tell you, and I have no idea if there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll.

However, I write a pretty good poem, and, given enough time and some chord sheets, I can play any song on the keyboard.  My singing voice is decent, and, every once in a while, I've been known to get some laughs on stage.

But I'm not a genius.

Here's what Billy Collins says about geniuses . . . 

Genius

by: Billy Collins

was what they called you in high school
if you tripped on a shoelace in the hall
and all your books went flying.

Or if you walked into an open locker door
you would be known as Einstein,
who imagined riding a streetcar into infinity.

Later, genius became someone
who could take a sliver of chalk and squire pi
a hundred places out beyond the decimal point,

or someone painting on his back on a scaffold,
or a man drawing a waterwheel in a margin,
or spinning out a little night music.

But earlier this week on a wooded path,
I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir
were the true geniuses,

the ones who had figured out how to fly,
how to be both beautiful and brutal,
and how to mate for life.

Twenty-four geniuses in all,
for I numbered them as Yeats had done,
deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface—

forty-eight if we count their still reflections,
or an even fifty if you want to toss in me
and the dog running up ahead,

who were smart enough to be out
that morning—she sniffing the ground,
me with my head up in the light morning breeze.

It has been a trying day.  I'm not going to get into any details, but I will say that God has a way of keeping you humble.  Don't worry.  Nobody is dead or dying.  I still teach at the university and program at the library.  My new collection of poems is still coming out at the beginning of October, and my puppy is snoring away peacefully in her cage.

Tonight's genius, for me, is the moon, which looks like a swan feather floating in the heavens.  I've always been an astronomy geek, and I spent a good deal of time, when I was younger, studying the lunar surface with my cheap telescope.  So I know all about the Sea of Tranquility and other maria.  

The moon reminds always me how small and insignificant human struggle is.  Compared to the rings of Saturn or the Andromeda Galaxy, my problems seem pretty . . . tiny.  I wish everyone in the world would spend just ten minutes outside every night, staring up at the stars and planets.  I think the world would be a much more peaceful place to exist.

Saint Marty is going to go look at the moon one more time before he brushes his teeth and closes his eyes.