8 Days of Billy Collins

I GET TO SEE BILLY COLLINS IN 8 DAYS. 
Even though I just typed this in all caps, you still have no idea how excited this makes me. 

I bought two of his books of poetry yesterday.  One is the same book as the one I had read all summer--except that one was borrowed from the library.  Now I have my owwnnnn copy. :)  The other one is some of his newer stuff, just to spice it up.  

We get to have him sign our things.  Meaning, for about 15 seconds, I will have Billy Collins' undevided attention.  
Crap. 
I get so star struck.  
When I ran a 5k last weekend and saw Dave Ryan and Leenah and the whole gang from KDWB's morning talk show , I kept saying to Tasha, "There they are!  They're right there!"  Well of course, April, this is THEIR CHERITY EVENT, YOU KNEW THEY WOULD BE THERE. 
When I imagine meeting Billy Collins in my head, I see myself saying, "....You're Billy Collins!"  And that is just when I try to think about meeting him.  Even when I scold my conscience for being lame, the same thought happens.  "YOU'RE BILLY COLLINS." 
Anyway, I have 8 days left to try and tame my nerdiness.  
Here is a poem for you to enjoy.  It's one of my favorites. 
 
Books

From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus
I can hear the library humming in the night,
a choir of authors murmuring inside their books
along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,
Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,
each one stitched into his own private coat,
together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

I picture a figure in the act of reading,
shoes on a desk, head tilted into the wind of a book,
a man in two worlds, holding the rope of his tie
as the suicide of lovers saturates a page,
or lighting a cigarette in the middle of a theorem.
He moves from paragraph to paragraph
as if touring a house of endless, paneled rooms.

I hear the voice of my mother reading to me
from a chair facing the bed, books about horses and dogs,
and inside her voice lie other distant sounds,
the horrors of a stable ablaze in the night,
a bark that is moving toward the brink of speech.

I watch myself building bookshelves in college,
walls within walls, as rain soaks New England,
or standing in a bookstore in a trench coat.

I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves,
straining in circles of light to find more light
until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs
that we follow across a page of fresh snow;

when evening is shadowing the forest
and small birds flutter down to consume the crumbs,
we have to listen hard to hear the voices
of the boy and his sister receding into the woods.