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# Today
- URL: https://poetry101.love/today/
- Published: 2024-11-08T07:47:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-01-27T04:30:05.000Z
- Description: by Billy Collins
- Author: Melissa Anderson
- Tags: Billy Collins, #Import 2026-11-04 19:11

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,  
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze  
  
that it made you want to throw  
open all the windows in the house  
  
and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,  
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,  
  
a day when the cool brick paths  
and the garden bursting with peonies  
  
seemed so etched in sunlight  
that you felt like taking  
  
a hammer to the glass paperweight  
on the living room end table,  
  
releasing the inhabitants  
from their snow-covered cottage  
  
so they could walk out,  
holding hands and squinting  
  
into this larger dome of blue and white,  
well, today is just that kind of day.

Collins, Billy. [Nine Horses: Poems](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Nine%5FHorses/6MYci63f-yoC?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=getbook&ref=poetry101.love). United States, Random House Publishing Group, 2011.

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## Why I chose this poem

Well, the poem stands on its own on this sunny day in December as one I appreciate, but there are some other layers. A friend pointed me at [a video from a Mae Martin stand-up comedy routine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE77WFTc8PI&ref=poetry101.love). So I can't read the poem without thinking of the video. And feeling grateful for days like today that do encourage releasing, not just the inhabitants, but the whole contents of a snow globe or two of my own.