To My Favorite Seventeen Year-Old High School Girl - Billy Collins

[Larry Robinson]

To My Favorite Seventeen Year-Old High School Girl

Do you realize that if you had started

building the Parthenon, on the day you were born
you would be all done in only one more year?
Of course, you couldn’t have done that alone,
so never mind, you’re fine just as you are.
You’re a love for simply being yourself.

But did you know that, at your age Judy Garland
was pulling down $150,000 per picture,
Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory,
and Blase Pascal had cleaned up his room?
No, wait, I mean he had invented the calculator.

Of course, there will be time for all that later in your life
after you come out of your room
and begin to blossom, or, at least, pick up all your socks.

For some reason, I keep remembering that Lady Jane Grey
was Queen of England when she was only fifteen,
but then she was beheaded, so never mind her as a role model.

A few centuries later, when he was your age,
Franz Schubert was doing the dishes for his family
but that did not keep him from composing two symphonies,
four operas, and two complete masses as a youngster.
But of course that was in Austria at the height
of romantic lyricism, not here in the suburbs of Cleveland.

Frankly, who cares if Annie Oakley was a crack shot at 15
or Maria Callas debuted as Tosca at 17?
We think you are special by just being you,
playing with your food and staring into space.
By the way, I lied about Schubert doing the dishes,
but that doesn’t mean he never helped out around the house.

 	- Billy Collins
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