Tone in "Picnic, Lightning"

Thesis: The tone in Billy Collins’s poem “Picnic, Lightning” morphs from a seeming flippancy, to helplessness, and finally to a sincere wonder as the speaker ponders the unpredictability of life and death.

            The change in tone signals the speaker’s realization that life must be enjoyed while it lasts. In the first stanza, Collins gives examples of freak accidents that people can die from, such as being “struck by a meteor / or a single-engine plane / while reading in a chair at home” (Collins lines 1-3). This particular circumstance sounds so preposterous and unlikely that the reader cannot help but laugh it off. The lighthearted tone draws the reader in, establishing a nonthreatening atmosphere. Many view death as something that could not possibly just unexpectedly happen to them. However, Collins then proceeds to describe a true account of a woman struck by lightning on a picnic. Her accident sounds just as unlikely, yet the reader knows it has actually happened. Transitioning into the next stanza, Collins identifies how a heart attack can be just as unexpected. He describes death: “a tiny dark ship is unmoored / into the flow of the body’s rivers, / the brain a monastery, / defenseless on the shore” (lines 16-19). The poem has at this point lost its earlier flippancy about death. There is a dark and fearful sense of helplessness in his description of death quietly overtaking the body. With this realization that one is not immune to death, it is easy to develop a certain preoccupation with it. The speaker imagines “the instant hand of Death / always ready to burst forth / from the sleeves of his voluminous cloak” (lines 25-27). Just as ignorance about the nature of death can be dangerous, paranoia can be detrimental as well. In the final stanza, Collins identifies a means to balance the unpredictability and the inevitability of death. As the speaker looks at the pieces of nature in the garden, “the wheelbarrow is a wider blue, / the clouds a brighter white” (lines 32-33). The tone is wondering as the speaker notices the beauty of life around him. There is no way to predict death, yet if people do not take time to appreciate life in the short time that it lasts, they will miss out on its simple joys.