THE AFTERLIFE by Billy Collins They’re moving off in all imaginable directions, each according to his own private belief, and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal: that everyone is right, as it turns out. you go to the place you always thought you would go, the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head. Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors into a zone of light, white as a January sun. Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute … Continue reading →

NEITHER SNOW by Billy Collins When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow, the distinguishable flakes blowing sideways, looked like krill fleeing the maw of an advancing whale. At least they looked that way to me from the taxi window, and since I happened to be sitting that fading Sunday afternoon in the very center of the universe, who was in a better position to say what looked like what, which thing resembled some other? Yes, it was a run of white plankton borne down the Avenue of the Americas in the stream of the wind, phosphorescent … Continue reading →