POEM+OF+THE+WEEK

**POEM OF THE WEEK**

 * In honor of our narrative writing and memoir unit --

here is one from U. S. Poet Laureate of 2001-02, Billy Collins:**

Boyhood
Alone in the basement, I would sometimes lower one eye to the level of the narrow train track

to watch the puffing locomotive pull the cars around a curve then bear down on me with its dazzling eye.

What was in those moments before I lifted my head and let the train go rocking by under my nose?

I remember not caring much about the fake grass or the buildings that made up the miniature town.

The same went for the station and its master, the crossing gates and flashing lights, the milk car, the pencil-size logs,

the metallic men and women, the dangling water tower, and the round mirror for a pond.

All I wanted was to be blinded over and over by this shaking light as the train stuck fast to its oval course.

Or better still, to close my eyes, to stay there on the cold narrow rails and let the train tunnel through me

the way it tunneled through the mountain painted the color of rock, and then there would be nothing

but the long whistling through the dark-- no basement, no boy, no everlasting summer afternoon.