Billy Collins: The Genius

is standing at a stove in a bathrobe
stirring a pot of soup with a long wooden spoon.

Earlier this afternoon
he was busy in the margins of a heavy book

and tonight he will take a walk
in the garden of calculus,

but now there is only the vegetable soup,
the circling of the spoon,

the easy rotation of the wrist,
and the aroma of onion and rosemary

the kind of moment when a brainstorm
is very likely to roll in.

Not when you are concentrating
under a lamp in your study

but when you are up in the woods
lifting a stone onto a wall,

or washing a glass in the sink
you look up and see a cloud in the window

and then there is only you,
the wet glass, and that cloud

which is slowly taking the shape
of an astonishing idea.