I can't quite help it, the euphoria that springtime brings. It sprinkles my street with magnolia petals, stacks my bookshelf with poetry, and fills the vases up with flowers, until there are no vases left and instead I use leftover baby food jars.
And here is one of my favourite poems, and here are some pretty pictures that I took this morning. (Don't worry, darling - I didn't leave the flowers perched precariously on top of your guitar.)
"It is not the tilted buildings or the blind alleys
that I mind,
nor the winding staircases leading nowhere
or the ones that are simply missing.
Nor is walking through a foreign city
with a ring of a thousand keys
looking for the one door the worst of it,
nor the blank maps I am offered by strangers.
I can even tolerate your constant running
away from me, slipping around corners,
rising in the cage of an elevator,
squinting out the rear window of a taxi,
and always on the arm of a tall man
in a beautiful suit
and a perfectly furled hat
whom I know is carrying a gun.
What kills me is the way you lie there
in the morning, eyes closed,
curled into a sweet ball of sleep
and that innocent look on your face
when you tell me over coffee and oranges
that really you were right there all night
next to me in bed
and then expect me to believe you
were lost in your own dreamworld,
some ridiculous alibi
involving swimming through clouds
to the pealing of bells,
a transparent white lie about leaping
from a high window ledge
then burying your face
in the plumage of an angel."
-Billy Collins, "Jealousy" (Sailing Alone Around the Room)
