For Mary, For Billy

Billy Collins was a little boy.

His breath heaving
up and down
on his mother's chest.
He must have colored outside the thick dark lines
of the coloring book
making lines and contours
of his own.
His alphabet blocks
strewn about the floor
never laid dormant.

The snow lying round the lettered blocks
in all their phonetic glory
small flakes falling
from the kaleidoscope sky,
smelled sweet and clean
and new.

Like the same time he planted tulip bulbs
in the April dirt
trowel and father in hand
overalls and mud
drips drop dripping from heaven.
The postman pulling up to the mailbox
offering cards and brown paper packages
from people across the seas.

Billy Collins was a child.
Now he is not.

In fact, it is more probable
that he is quite old.
Is he married,
or was there a divorce
where his wife threw a teapot
on the wall, cutting his arm,
making her cry?

She meant to do it,
but didn't want pain.
She wanted small fetus safety.
She wanted warm baby breaths
on her chest
like the cat she found under the porch
and nursed back to health.

This is who she was.
Billy wanted it too.
If only if only he could
put down the pen and paper and
read a poem to her.
One with love in his throat
coated with chamomile and honey.

Honey, he would say,
you know I don't mean nothin' by it.
But because he was Billy Collins
he would use proper grammar.

They would kiss and make up--
should this world be an ideal one--
stay together
and procure a blanket made of new snow
that no dogs had chance to soil yet.
The snow would muffle the cries from outside
their solid oak door.
The pounding could not be heard
by the two birds in the bower
hovering above
the chaotic world below.

Lest we bow down, readers of sonnets
and ballads,
worshipers of enjambment
and prosody.
It is a known fact
that while greatness is great
even Billy Collins was a boy
once in his life.

-My friend Mary was once a little girl. My dream is, should we have known each other way back then, we would have climbed trees and made mud pies together.