The Reader

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

Lady Reading

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

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

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

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

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

My First Addiction

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

Others might be like me
Maybe I can be a leader;
Confessing I was weekly hooked
By (yes) the Weekly Reader.

I was only six years old
Not knowing that succeeding
My young life then was bound to be
A lifetime full of reading.

Every week we’d read about
A galaxy expanding
We read ourselves to rocketships
And on the first moon landing.

The Reader faded as we grew
And we turned other pages new
But learned within those books we’d share
That words could take us anywhere.

The vistas of your mind

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

I see the vistas of your mind
  as carried through your words;
  the colors of your feelings,
  ever-changing –

The way you restlessly explore
  each strange and new adventure;
  the many places that your heart
  is ranging —

And what this is, is hard to know:
  your vision, planted in my mind,
  a place, I’ll never, ever go,
  but can see, nonetheless

Your mind is ever altering,
  responding and transforming,
  and my own thoughts and feelings
  rearranging

There Is A Place

Posted on by Beleaguered Servant

She does what she must do,
And is a loving, loyal friend;
She takes care of her family,
And toils without end

To keep all of them healthy,
And to bring joy to each day;
She strives to be creative, and
She often finds a way

There is a place, though, that she goes
When she needs to reboot:
One might not even notice her,
So hidden and so mute

But there, her laden mind takes rest
Inside each turning page;
A place she’s so engrossed that she
At last can
Disengage