Bonsai ~ Billy Collins ~ Reflections by Daniel D

Just in case you didn’t know, a Bonsai is an ornamental tree or shrub grown in a pot and artificially prevented from reaching its normal size. While writing his poem “Bonsai,” Billy Collins had obviously been staring intently across the room he was in at his own miniature tree. The first thing he says, is how only one Bonsai can “Throw a room completely out of whack.” It’s so small, so it makes everything around it look gigantic; oversized. He makes it seem as if it has its own world, as he does in many other of his poems. “A lone stark gesture of wood on the distant cliff of a table.” He then goes on to explain that when looked at up close, the Bonsai draws everything down to its size; “The box of matches is a raft, and the coffee cup a cistern..” Billy Collins obviously let his imagination run wild with this poem, describing his own little world by looking at a simple Bonsai tree. He explains how he wants to climb up into its tiny branches and look down and see a “tiny whale.. Plunging forward through the troughs.” To make the poet see everything pulled down to proportion with the Bonsai tree, Collins ingeniously makes every stanza only two lines long, nice and neat; just like a Bonsai Tree.