who wants to read a book?
I do!
It's love, just to hold
- it's a comfort object
with all that it's been
through with you, so
carefully kept -
a book that's been in the bath,
your hands get wet, and large fat drops
reflecting within your nakedness
dive into the pages and hide their heads
the paper a pattern of patina
it inevitably gets, despite
your cares. It's ok, it creates
a more varying personal surface
to interact through,
and with.
I hope
I'll be reading it
After you
4 comments:
I want to like this poem because I love the sentiment and the imagery; however, I keep thinking of that poor book with its waterlogged pages. I'm ok with a book bearing the marks of being well loved, but water on a book dries and I don't like when that happens. I realize it sounds like I'm missing the point. I'm really not. I think this is a beautiful poem with a fine ending. I just have strong feelings about books as you know.
Yes, I worked a semicolon into my comment just to show off. ;)
You're always doing that. ;-)
Yeah, I like to protect books, but something about specific situations makes me feel the risk is warranted, and that the book would be thrilled to be exposed to it.
Unwarranted anthropomorphizing? Sure, but on some level so is feeling like one needs to go to the book rescue pound to take in all the poor dog-eared volumes mistreated by the corner-folders and underliners.
I say compassion is never misplaced. Even directed towards inanimate objects, still arguably it's good practice for us. But compassion takes many forms, and the best of them may be to do unto others as one would be done by.
I like the idea of a book being excited about the risk of hovering over water, knowing that the end result will be participation in a poem like this. I think that many books would be happy to live such a life instead of being left for years on a shelf, collecting dust and hoping one day to be read and go on adventures. I suppose I never stopped to think about the feelings of the book in my original comment. Shame on me.
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