The Rain in Portugal
Billy Collins

I Found Eugene Burger Living in Nine Billy Collins’ Poems

I read “The Rain in Portugal”
over the course of three sittings, three days.

I am a slow reader
and I often read Billy Collins’ poems aloud,
slowly, because hearing his masterful words
spoken aloud in my own voice
makes me feel I have something beautiful to say –

On the second day,
I found Eugene Burger living in nine Billy Collins’ poems:
“The Bard in Flight,” if you must know, “Sirens,”
“Predator,” Traffic,” “Sixteen Years Old, I Help Bring in the Hay
on My Uncle John’s Farm with Two French-Canadian Workers,”
“The Present,” “On Rhyme,” “The Five Spot, 1964,”
and “2128.”

Each poem made me gasp,
there was Eugene, our dearest, departed friend –
Eugene! Magician! “Magic’s Mystic Guru!” –

and each made me sob,
craving one more conversation with Eugene,
weeping, for myself,
weeping, too, for the unrepairable loss Robert feels,
boundless tears splattering cream-colored pages,
the slim volume trembling in my hands.

I hadn’t found Eugene in the earlier Billy Collins’ poems,
the ones I had read the day before.
And I didn’t find Eugene in the remaining poems I finished today.
And, now, he no longer seems to live in the nine poems, either,
so, I don’t now know where Eugene went –
but, you know, the man could be quite elusive.
Mischief, after all,
was his trade.