Billy Collins
On Craft
The treetops are rustling in the wind
and hidden streams
are flowing over rocks
between the fern-covered banks,
yet no one will admit how easy it is
to write poems,
to let them come out
like ordinary breath
or a thin lip-stream of smoke—
how really effortless it is
and so what
even if only one in a thousand
deserves the attention
the flames do
in a fireplace on any given winter night.
