from a book of poetry

I was reading this poem
about a girl who sat
on the same bench
near some blue hydrangeas
every Tuesday
eating her lunch

which she had made herself
and brought from home
and I remember not much caring
about where the lunch came from
or why that bench or Tuesday
or even about who the girl was

when there was a sudden silence
of the crowd of people around me
in the courtyard where I sat

I set down my book of poetry
but I had missed what
had silenced the crowd

as I reached for the sandwich
I’d made at home that morning
I noticed the blue hydrangeas
in the planter behind the bench
and how the petals looked like butterflies
around a small world
and I looked up at the mid-day sky
so blue, and I wondered what we
looked like from the outside
and if anyone bothered to much care

/ / /

I wrote this poem a couple of weeks ago. It was written in response to a prompt from Not Without Poetry.

Grab a book of poetry. Try not to be too picky. From the last line of the first poem, take a word or phrase and write it down. Now, from the first line of the last poem, take a word or phrase and write it down. Now, from a random line from a random poem somewhere in between the first and the last poems, take a word or phrase and write it down. With those three words or phrases, and this picture, write.

I used The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins. I used the following three lines from his poems as my inspiration:

near some blue hydrangeas, reading this

I remember not caring much

there is a sudden silence of the crowd