Reading

Reading

And he had not been in it two minutes before he fell

fast asleep, into the quietest, sunniest, coziest

sleep that ever he had in his life; and he dreamt

about green meadows by which he had walked

that morning, and the tall elm-trees,

and the sleeping cows; and after that he dreamt

of nothing at all.

                                    The Water Babies

                                    Charles Kingsley

This is the part, though it comes early

in the book, that she’ll always have to sit

down for, that a chair’s solid moored

unmoving bottom buoys for her.  Even after

all these years she can feel her hair

pulled back and her scalp burn and this is

the part, read aloud, that she sunk

her teeth into and wanted, and locked

her arms and elbows around, and fought

to keep beneath the surface with her—

hers alone, the hush under the water so far away

from the crazed rush and fizz and screech

soon so soon who’d know but the drowning

how soon this sleep…

                                    and nothing on earth is like it:

the velvet dark, the weightless ease dark the leaving

off of skin dark, the left behind shirt

of a boy she knew dark, one who slept too,

and the two girls floating away, wrapped

in a rain jacket zipped up in the back....

but that great rip, like hooking the line

beneath the buoy and the heave

out of the flat as glass water, her huff and heave

of
                                             leave me alone I just want to read my book

                                    and then sleep just please, look,

                        everyone else already is.