Billy Collins Inspired Poetry, “Her”

The Quiet City

In this corner of the world

as I’m sitting down to bask in the sunlight, I notice how serene my environment is.

On this particular day, the city sounds all too quiet:

No gas guzzler vehicle starting in the distance, not a single buzzer on a phone going off, and an only occasional chirp from a shy bird or two.

All that I hear is thoughts moving across my mind like heavy traffic, and the gentle footsteps that patter on the ground.

This morning is odd,

I am only hearing the softness of the world, as if it’s resting.

It sounds oh so quiet that I ask a friend

Where might the city bustle have gone?

• In this poem I was inspired by Billy Collins Her, which tells a moment of a man walking around his suburbs and taking in how loud the sounds around him actually are, such as the dog barks, the leafblowers, and the garbage trucks. 

• I was also inspired by the simplicity of the poem and internal dialogue of the poem. In my poem, I focused on my location of Hong Kong, and talked about how unbearably quiet it was one day because I’m very used to the city noise.