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Genius

was what they called you
in high school if you tripped
on a shoelace in the hall
and all your books went flying.

Or if you walked
into an open locker door,
you would be known as Einstein,
who imagined riding a streetcar
into infinity.

Later, genius became someone
who could take a sliver of chalk
and square pi a hundred places
out beyond the decimal point,

or a man painting
on his back on a scaffold,
or drawing a waterwheel
in a margin, or spinning out
a little night music.

But earlier this week
on a wooded path, I thought
the swans afloat on the reservoir
were the true geniuses,
the ones who had figured out
how to fly, how to be
both beautiful and brutal,
and how to mate for life.

Twenty-four geniuses in all,
for I numbered them
as Yeats had done,
deployed upon the calm,
crystalline surface—

forty-eight if we count
their white reflections,
or an even fifty
if you want to throw in me
and the dog running up ahead,

who were at least smart enough
to be out that morning—
she sniffing the ground,
me with my head up
in the bright morning air.

—Billy Collins

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