My Number

 Is Death miles away from this house,

reaching for a widow in Cincinnati

or breathing down the neck of a lost hiker

in British Columbia?

 

Is he too busy making arrangements,

tampering with air brakes,

scattering cancer cells like seeds,

loosening the wooden beams of roller coasters

 

to bother with my hidden cottage

that visitors find so hard to find?

 

Or is he stepping from a black car

parked at the dark end of the lane,

shaking open the familiar cloak,

its hood raised like the head of a crow,

and removing the scythe from the trunk?

 

Did you have any trouble with the directions?

I will ask, as I start talking my way out of this.

 

Billy Collins, The Apple That Astonished Paris (University of Arkansas Press, 2006)