Billy Collins and "The Bard in Flight"

 

An interview with former Poet Laureate Billy Collins, about keeping Shakespeare and all great writers and poetry itself on a human scale:

https://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited/billy-collins 

The podcast includes Collins reading this delightful poem about a time-traveling Will --

"The Bard in Flight"

It occurred to me
on a flight from London to Barcelona
that Shakespeare could have written
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England
with more authority had he occupied
the window seat next to me
instead of this businessman from Frankfurt.

Of course, after a couple of drinks
and me loaning him an earbud
he might become so preoccupied
with Miles Davis at the Blackhawk
at 36,000 feet above some realm or other to write a word.

I imagine he'd enjoy playing with my wristwatch,
the one with the tartan band,
and when he wasn't looking out the window,
he would study the ice cubes in his rotating glass.
And he'd take a keen interest
in the various announcements from the flight deck
and the ministrations of the bowing attendants,
all of which would be sadly lost on me
having gotten used to rushing above the clouds,
even though 99% of humanity has never been there.

Yet, I am still fond of the snub-nosed engines,
the straining harmony of the twin jets,
and even that sensation of turbulence
jostled about high above some blessed plot
with the sound of crockery shifting in the galley,
the frenzied eyes of the nervous passengers,
and the Bard reaching for my hand
as we roared with trembling wings
into the towering fortress of a thunderhead.