#14... Excerpt from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

What Billy Collins was referring too in his poem Picnic, Lightning.

Click here to see the link to the excerpt.

The poems deals with ones' reflection on death.

I quite like this poem because it explores the different ways in which one could die in a unique way. It is quite opposite to Lolita's recollection of her mother's death, which was not really memories of her own, but those borrowed from someone else.

I also like it because it introduces the reader to another piece from another writer. Collins lets his readers experience another artists' piece through his work. By giving his reader a chance to discover the piece through a simple mention in reference he also gives his readers the choice of doing research on the piece mentioned or just leaving it as just a simple reference.

So it is sort of like a two for one deal. Sweet. :)

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The poem:

Picnic, Lightning
by Billy Collins

"My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident
(picnic, lightning) when I was three."

Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drops from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatients—
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.

Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,

and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next.