I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

I love Billy Collins. I am also partial to T.S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. H. Auden

Who are your favourite poets? Favourite poems?