#19

Japan
Today I pass the time reading a favorite haiku, the few words over and over. It feels like eating the same small, perfect grape again and again. I walk through the house reciting it and leave its letters falling through the air of every room. I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it. I say it in front of a painting of the sea. I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf. I listen to myself saying it, then I say it without listening, then I hear it without saying it. And when the dog looks up at me, I kneel down on the floor and whisper it into each of his long white ears. It's the one about the one-ton temple bell with the moth sleeping on its surface, and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating pressure of the moth on the surface of the iron bell. When I say it at the window, the bell is the world and I am the moth resting there. When I say it at the mirror, I am the heavy bell and the moth is life with its papery wings. And later, when I say it to you in the dark, you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you, and the moth has flown from its line and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
Billy Collins

The reason I dislike this poem is because it's boring. To expand more on that the flow of the poem isn't smooth. When I think of poems, I think of soothing effects. Yet, with the title of the poem being Japan, I would want to feel more of meditation and calming retreats, but with this poem I sense more of fear and loneliness. Although there are diiferents types of poems, this one shows the intense side of writing. At times the writer tries to incoperate soft metaphors and similes to take away from the complicated yet edgy descriptive writing. The poem is nice, it's just not one that makes me want to read through completely, sit back and analyze.