Serenade

I would have to say that I have the best major. Seriously though. No tests in the testing center. Reading poetry is my homework. No math. There is no point in arguing. The other day, my teacher shared this poem with us in class. We were discussing how poets are always striving to share a new idea or a new thought, and he used this poem as an example for setting a new standard, for finding something inventive.

I found it romantic, and just my style.

Serenade

Billy Collins.

Let the other boys form the village
gather under your window
and strum their bean-shaped guitars.

Let them huddle under your balcony
heavy with flowers,
and fill the night with their longing—

locals in luminous shirts,
yodeling over their three simple chords,
hoping for a glimpse of your moonlit arm.

Meanwhile, I will bide my time
and continue my lessons on the zither
and my study of the miniature bassoon.

Every morning I will walk the corridor
to the music room
lined with the fierce portraits of my ancestors

knowing there is nothing like practice
to devour the hours of life—
sheets of music floating down,

a double reed in my mouth
or my fingers curled
over a row of wakeful strings.

And if this is not enough
to rouse you from your light sleep
and lure you through the open doors,

I will apply myself to the pyrophone,
the double-lap dulcimer,
the glassarina, and the tiny thumb pinao.

I will be the strange one,
the pale eccentric
who wears the same clothes every day,

the one at the train station
carrying the black case
shaped like nothing you have seen before.

I will be the irresistible misfit
who sends up over a ledge of flowers
sounds no woman has ever heard—

the one who longs to see your face,
framed by bougainvillea,
perplexed but full of charity,

looking down at me as I finger
a nameless instrument
it took so many days and nights to invent.