Following a reading which included this poem, a man came up and handed me his business card, his business being Dollhouse Building and Repairs. “It’s just a metaphor!” I cried out, but he had already put on his literal hat and coat and vanished out the literal door.
Some Days
Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.
All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.
But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs,
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.
Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next
if you were going to spend it
striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds,
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?
Billy Collins served as a two-term Poet Laureate (2001–03) and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent book of poems is Water, Water (Random House, 2024), and forthcoming later this year is Dog Show, a collection of his poems about dogs, with watercolors by Pamela Sztybel. “Some Days” is from Sailing Alone Around the Room (2000, Random House).