OMG

Yesterday on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, Billy Collins (US Poet Laureate, 2001-2003) shared several short and delightful poems, two of which ("Flock" and "Oh My God") have been faithfully transcribed below. Also included are the introductions he provided with the pieces.

...I began to write this when I came across a sentence in an article about printing. and the sentence was "it has been calculated that each copy of the Guttenburg Bible required the skins of 300 sheep." So a fairly short poem called "Flock":

I can see them squeezed into the holding pen
Behind the stone building
Where the printing press is housed,
All of them squirming around
To find a little room
And looking so much alike
It would be nearly impossible to count them, and there is no telling
Which one will carry the news that the Lord is a shepherd,
One of the few things they already know.

I have a little poem which is titled "Oh My God," which is an expression that you hear rather frequently these days. There's "Oh, My God," and then there's another expression, "I was like 'Oh, My God,' which doesn't make much sense to me. "Say, what were you like as a child?" "I was like, Oh...my God." I don't know what that means. But here it is; it's short form. Oh, My God.

Not only in church

and nightly by their bedsides

do young girls pray these days.

Wherever they go,

prayer is woven into their talk
like a bright thread of awe.

Even in the pedestrian mall

outbursts of praise spring unbidden

from their glossy lips.