By Billy Collins

Featured Art: The Cock Sparrow by George Edwards

Up to this point
I had assumed that He and I
had little or nothing in common

but one morning as I sat
in a blue Adirondack chair
in the middle of an expanse of lawn

though I seemed only
to be staring into space,
I realized that I, too,

had my eye on a sparrow,
who hopped around a little
in the grass then hurriedly flew away.

---

Billy Collins’s latest collection is Whale Day (Random House, 2020). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Originally appeared in NOR 14.