Cheers


Already tonight I have lifted my glass to Jackie
Wilson and to Gracie Lantz, the voice
of Woody Woodpecker and creator of the taunting laugh
according to her obituary in this morning's paper.

And now the wind is whistling at the doors and windows,
straining to lift the roof off this house,
and I am alone and casting about for someone else
to toast, someone remarkable whose leaving

shrivels the skin of the world. It could be
a virgin martyr or exiled Ovid, or even Jackie
Wilson again, the man no act would follow,
not James Brown, not the Temptations, one of whom

explained it was because he left a hole in the stage.
The only toast that should follow a toast to the dead
is a toast to the long dead, so up goes my glass
to the first man ever to notice the outline

of a bear in the stars one quiet night long before
the wheel and shortly after fire. It is said
that laziness was the mother of astronomy,
and surely he must have spent hours on his back,

hands pillowing his head, while his eyes
connected the points of light with imaginary lines
until a ferocious shape stood before him in the sky.
I drink to the long wonderment of his gazing,

the Nile of amazement flowing into the night,
his hand moving up to cover his open mouth.
And still the wind is driving hard through the trees,
knocking down the weak branches which I will

gather in the morning and break over my knee
for kindling; but the scene inside is composed,
a tableau of bottle, vase, open book,
a painting of a little ship framed on the wall,

far from home in a churning sea and burdened
with perilous cargo. I wander in the details
of its sail lines and streamers flying from the masts.
I see a man in the rigging, the red dot of his shirt.

No wonder visitors always remark on this picture
while I am out in the kitchen making their drinks
and getting ready to propose the first toast,
to hoist my glass to that dark, bearded man

lying dumbstruck and reeking of woodsmoke
a little distance from the mouth of his cave.
Here's to the bear he saw roaring in the heavens,
to the ram, the tilted scales, the intricate crab,

and the dippers pouring out a universe of ink.
Here's to Cassiopeia in her chair and chained Andromeda.
Here's to the wind blowing against this lighted house
and to the vast, windless spaces between the stars.

Billy Collins

From: The Art of Drowning