"to live between the covers..."

"Books
are the quietist,
and most constant
of friends..."
- c.w. eliot


when I
was a girl
my days were filled with
counting the seconds
between
the last line read,
and the
next paragraph
waiting
to be discovered

i lived between the covers of
countless
bindings,
slipped between the
pages of
Dickens
and Bronte,
Little Women
and
Nancy Drew's
yellow roadster

i'd hear the forecast of
rain -- the promise
dark clouds,
a soft drumming,
lamplight midday
and I'd rush through my
chores towards an afternoon
of characters that
leapt off the pages and
into my heart

Jane,
Jo,
Heathcliff,
George and Bess
Hannah Gruen
and always
the inimitable
Madame Defarge
knitting in the corner
while Mr. Darcy
waits
for Emma to
come to her senses on
page 148

my childhood was spent in
places I'd never find on
a map
and friends I'd never
have to tea

I'd weep
when a dark horse
without hope
won her steeplechase
and attend weddings from within
my nest under the
upper bunk

I lived for Saturdays at
the library,
and dreamed in
stacks of books with
spines that
crackle with age
and are perfumed with the
touch of other
hands

with a book
in my hands
on a rainy day,
I am
still
a
girl



"She is
too fond of 
books..."

~ Louisa May Alcott