Poetry Part Wednesday

This poem by Billy Collins is the one that got me hooked on him.  I love the way he notices the little things in life, the things we each would have mentioned ourselves if we'd thought to say them -- but we didn't, and he did.  (Which, I think, is the job of poets and comedians.) 

I Go Back To The House For A Book


I turn around on the gravel and go back to the house for a book, something to read at the doctor's office, and while I am inside, running the finger of inquisition along a shelf, another me that did not bother to go back to the house for a book heads out on his own, rolls down the driveway, and swings left toward town, a ghost in his ghost car, another knot in the string of time, a good three minutes ahead of me — a spacing that will now continue for the rest of my life. 

Billy Collins