A Strange Adventure

On 2022112620221121 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

When you fall in love, 
People are excited for you, but 
It's rarely about the actual person. 
They relate to the process, 
Even if the specifics leave them unmoved. 

This is what falling in love 
With a book can be like, as well: 
We try to convey our enthusiasm, 
But people relate better to our passion than 
It's object.

(All images from “Strange Adventures“, a book I’m still thinking about 2 years later. For more posts from the Tiny Peppers durational National Blog Posting Month, click here.)

one more for you

On 2022090320220828 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

reading, reading, all the time: 
love, adventure, hope, and crime, 
worlds of fantasy, and words 
flying out like flocks of birds 
past us, through us, in us, out us, 
past and present all about us, 
yes i know it's late, it's true: 
sure, though, here's one more 

for you

A Reader

On 2022033120220331 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

Silent as a reading room,
Active as a country pond,
Still and self-contained, but yet
Somewhere past, above, beyond --

Spaces spanning, occupying
Fantasy, reality --
To see, perhaps, not quite the world,
But, for a moment, what

The others see

The Reader

On 2019071920190719 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

As a little girl
She was told that one day
When she was much older and retired
She would have time to read
All the time she wanted

But she reckoned
That even if she started young
And read all the time
And lived to be old
It wouldn’t be enough time

But she tried it anyway

And read as a girl on nights she felt scared
And read as a young woman to feel and to grow
She read as a mother to her young children
And continued to find both new and old books to read

She was never confined in reading
Never yelled at
Never told she wasn’t good enough
Never felt inadequate
Always just immersed

And now her children’s children are having children
And still she reads
As they all read
Somehow she passed on this solitary activity
To those she loves and who love her

Reading is not “easy”

But nothing in life that matters
Ever is

Your Library

On 2019050120190501 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

A library seems random
Unless it is your own:
The taken paths to get those books,
Haphazard and unknown.

Enthusiasms come and go,
We swim in different waters;
At times we nearly (almost) drown,
And others, splash like otters —

We find ourselves, or find that we
Are not quite who we thought;
Or lose ourselves, entranced in tales
Exactly as we sought —

In word and story, rhyme and tale,
In tension or in languor,
The thrill of lives we’ll never know,
The taste of love, or anger,

Or learning: these, our lives, or hopes,
Our early dreams begotten,
That stir within us in our sleep,
Like echoes, unforgotten.

But though the senses fade with time,
They don’t need much reminding
To thrill to that familiar type —
The scent of old cracked binding —

For what you’ve read is who you’ve been,
The library assembler —
And it’s still there for you, for me,
If we would just

Remember

8 Portraits, #8

On 2019042720190427 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

Spare moments she can find, she’ll always read.
It’s how she says she’s been since she was small;
Some just for fun, and some her soul to feed,
We’ve large walls full of books – she’s read them all.

It is a thing about her I hold dear;
Not just her loving heart, but searching mind;
There is something appealing in the sheer
Energy she always seems to find

Exploring some new place or some new book.
I might walk in exhausted from my day,
So she’ll glance up to give a loving look,
And when I need, she’ll put the book away —

But I, who’ve loved to read since just a boy –
I hate to interrupt
That sort
Of joy