Congrats Liz and Jeff! You get the award I invented for the most stylish wedding. Love you!

I love love love this poem and post it for Michael and those who dissect poems with an emotionless scalpel.

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

This is a collage from the time I spend with David and Cerise in California. Beautiful people and beautiful places. The nighttime photographs at Joshua Tree were probably the best part.