Starting with a Book
He wanders around his silent home,
uneasy one might say, lonely as a cloud,
said one cleverer than he.
Music, yes, that’s it, music,
music and whiskey. No, no not yet.
He puts his specs on the end of his nose
and his eyes crawl along the bookshelves;
across, down, across again.
Eyes like frightened hamsters, nervously
searching, flicking one way then another.
Fingers fit for a piano he’s never played
touch one book then move one,
touching another. He pulls one out,
puts it back, shaking his head.
Finally, he pulls out an ancient red hardback
and sighs, nodding his head. He flicks it open,
past the frontispiece, past the contents page
and the introduction he knows was written
by some long-dead English professor of literature.
He doesn’t care.
The first real page speaks to him:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,”
and on, as any decent reader could easily recite from memory.
Maybe the second, he thinks, reflecting
on the recently departed year, but I’d need
convincing of the first.
Sinking into the overstuffed chair
where he always reads, he says out loud,
“yes, it’s time I had a talk with Uncle Charles”.
Ghosts meet across time, and in this place
he’s convinced he’s human, at last.
