This is the beginning: On Aristotle

On Aristotle by Billy Collins

This is the beginning
Almost anything can happen
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page,
Think of an egg, or the letter 'A;
a woman ironing on a bare stage
as the heavy curtain rises
This is the very beginning
The first person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks
This is early ion, years before the Ark, dawn,
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the all of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl,
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her,
your first night without her,
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers

teaming with people at cross purposes
a million schemes, a million wild looks.
Disappointment  unshoulders  his knapsack
here and pitches his ragged tent.
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals
where the actions suddenly reverses
or swerves off in an outrageous direction
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
to why Miriam does not want Edwards child
Someone hides a letter under a pillow
Here the aria  arises to a pitch
a song of betrayal salted with revenge
and the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
halfway up the mountain
This is the bridge, the painful modulations
this is the thick of things
so much is crowded into the middle
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados
Russian uniforms, noisy parties
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through walls
too much to name too much to think about

And this is the end
the car running out of road
the river losing its name in an ocean
the long nose of the photographed horse
touching the white electric line
this is the colophon, the last elephant  in the parade,
the empty wheelchair
and pigeons floating down in the evening
and the stage is littered with bodies,

the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
and the climbers are in their graves.
It is me hitting the period
and you closing the book,
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck,
This is the final bit
thinning away to nothing.
This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have all been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining
a streak of light in the sky
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves