Time for Leisure

Thomas Doughty, Susquehanna River

Fishing on the Susquehanna River in July

By Billy Collins

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna

or on any river for that matter

to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month

have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—

of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found

in a quiet room like this one—

a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table—

trying to manufacture the sensation

of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt

that others have been fishing

on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,

sliding the oars under the water

then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to

fishing on the Susquehanna

was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time

in front of a painting

in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,

dense trees along the banks,

and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green

flat-bottom boat

holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely

ever to do, I remember

saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on

to other American scenes

of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare

who seemed so wired with alertness

I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

In this poem a bit of self-examination occurs, on the subject of taking time to relax. Though the speaker has never fished on the Susquehanna River, and the scene depicted in a painting is somewhat appealing, he believes he never will slide oars under the water, then raise them to drip in the light. Why not? Because he has other things he enjoys doing that are more familiar, but also, he has to balance “a little egg of time” to allow himself even to pause before a painting in an art museum. He blinks and moves on, but can’t escape thinking about a brown hare in another painting who shows him just what he needs to do to enjoy more leisure in a broader world: The hare, “who seemed so wired with alertness / I imagined him springing right out of the frame.”

When have you felt compelled to “spring from a frame” that contained you, so that you could be free to enjoy some adventure in timeless leisure?

Time for Leisure

Fishing on the Susquehanna River in July

By Billy Collins

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