Explication of My Number and I Had Heard It's a Fight

     In the poem My Number, by Billy Collins, the nature and timing of death is described as one of the most mysterious and unavoidable phenomenons in the world. In the first stanza of the poem, he questions whether "Death", which is capitalized like a proper noun almost as if it was a person, is going to appear for a widow living in Cincinatti, or whether it will find the soul of a lost hiker all the way in British Columbia, Canada. This poem begins to give life and personify this term of death by giving it tasks, but they are not all the tasks of an everyday person. The speaker questions all different methods that could potentially cause death. For example, "tampering the air brakes" which would imply a tragic car accident, and "scattering cancer cells like seeds" which refers to the dismal disease are all different scenarios the speaker offers. I think that the poet describes death as such a nonchalant sensation that will pass over every single person that walks this earth. Although the last paragraph implies that he is not ready for death himself, "Did you have any trouble with the directions?/ I will ask, as I start talking my way out of this", it all seems so casual to him.
    In the poem, I had heard it's a fight, by Edwin Derby, the speaker describes the concept of death in a much different fashion. For Billy Collins, death was more of an inevitable given. But in Edwin Derby's poem, death is rumored to be more like a brutal and exhausting fight, "At the first clammy touch/ You yell, you wrestle with it, it kicks you/ In the stomach". However, when death is upon him, he realizes that it is a much "sweeter" experience that was it was told to have been. The tone of this poem is definitely lighter than the tone of My Number with the rhyme scheme and the present imagery.