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No Time

By Billy Collins b. 1941 Billy Collins

In a rush this weekday morning,

I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery

where my parents are buried

side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite.

Then, all day, I think of him rising up

to give me that look

of knowing disapproval

while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.

Source: Poetry (December 2000).

Biography

Dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself. John Updike praised Collins for writing “lovely poems...Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all . . .

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