Meeting Billy Collins

THE VISIT

For steve-o

What if, I imagine, Billy Collins came to San Francisco

for some fancy literary conference and we met by chance

at some divey bar, I would sip a Boulevardier

and he would be looking down at his whiskey,

maybe trying to figure out how to write about me,

I would end up being this kid he met at a bar

while it rained outside, it’s not really raining now,

but I imagine he would say it was raining

Adding a dash of humor to a line

or maybe my stumbling to the bathroom,

or mumbling about a lost love,

then we would get back to talking the night away,

though in reality we both like going to bed early

and we would not be up all night,

then again this sounds like the type of poem

he would write if we met, shifting from what is

to what we envision or embellish later with ink,

as we drink our coffee on some cold morning

staring down at the blank page, trying to maintain the music

of poetry we hear, shifting between conversational styles or rhyme,

and Billy would remember me, but he would add

that as we walked out of the bar a North Beach dog was waiting outside

the pup standing still looking up to us, Billy would pet him

and I would smile and suggest he write a poem about him,

Billy would laugh and say I’ve written a lot about them

and we would part ways, stumbling back to our own lives.