Billy Collins Is Bored with My Dead Mother

The other day, as I often do, I thought of my dead mother

which is to say I lack the luxury not to think of her

like the former US Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, who found

himself famous (by poet standards) due, he might tell you

in a dozen of his own poems, to his own dead mother

who quit her job to take up reading verse to her darling.

My mother worked two jobs, had an undiagnosed breakdown,

then stopped working altogether, read me Where the Red Fern

Grows once, which I never forgot, how the plant grew from love

and from loss, something you will find in the L section

of the dictionary where ol’ Billy Goat Collins plucked up lanyard

to travel back to his own dead mother, an ancient practice—

kaddish, to word your way to the past in the present, pray

yourself like the esteemed bard of the Bronx back to the lake

where he summered, or this lesser, browner, gayer, later

shadow, to the ghetto where I survived, back to mothers

long laid to rest, to say we won’t forget them, or we’ll try

as best we can. Except, here comes Collins in his silver years

to tell The New York Times, “When it comes to dead relatives,”

and I picture him when I met him, “I’m out.” When two women

read their poems (one would become the new laureate), Collins

scribbled out notes for each on how they might improve, unasked.

Some people are like that. My mother once jumped on a woman

and pounded her face into the ground. I wish Billy could’ve met her.