READING

1
Reading, the Latin lego tells us, is a matter of collecting. The Greek had called it re-collecting. Knowing again.

It's this deep relation to memory that enables us to look in a way that is not exhausted by signals of the optic nerve. That can catch what is only about to come into being. A text, a composition in the mind.

And the German lesen reminds us. In its compound ährenlesen, gathering ears of grain. That it is also sorting them from chaff, gathering with discernment.

2
Now that your memory is failing. What happens? When you look at the black shapes on the page?

Does the fuse still flash as you assemble the particulars? And recognition send you sailing? Through paragraphs to pleasure domes?

Or do you see the page littered with mouse droppings? And you, heavy and slow in the garden of effort? Reduced to tremendous craving?

3
When you look up to gather in a bit of sky through the window. The blue seems to hammer. Too intense a light.

Does reading stretch into perspectives too gigantic? Galaxies too distant? Times out of mind? 

Or take you back into your younger self? That swallowed books whole? And like lightwaves never stopped, never slowed down?  

4
We no longer move our lips when reading. As monks did in the Middle Ages. And you in first grade.

This makes for greater speed, but don't you prefer to linger? Between your singular? And the plural coiled in every word?

Do you feel the crackling charge? Whenever your eyes come back to the book? Because reading, like desire, buzzes electric.

5
When turning the page, do you hold on to it? To Alice asking, How long is forever? Or slink off into associations?

We can feel our thoughts unfold. With the words. Toward the ruins of Gaza? Or the long-gone Hanging Gardens. Of Semiramis?

And we love it, this turbulence of words against the retina. I've heard of men reading even on their deathbed. The Memoirs of Casanova.

TALKING

You talk even when there is no one else in the room. Are you throwing out bridges? Hoping something will cross?

Or do you fear you are, like an electron. Not really there unless observed? Or at least heard?

Or is it that your mother taught you, with great fervor. As Israel taught mankind. To speak to God?

When you speak of her. You seem to think more softly. And wear many layers of clothes.

But when you speak of words. They seem less a chance to relate. To what excludes relation, the infinitely distant, strange.

Than something caressing the mind. A place to be. Where real turns possible, and possible, real.

You love moving in this space. Don't mind stepping on its cracks. Your mother is beyond breaking her back.

And you rap out rhymes, passports to memory. Ring all the bells of that elusive palace. And make its doors swing wide.

Only, the farther down you walk its halls the less. I hear and have to call. As God did to Adam: Where art thou?