Bibliophile
I hardly noticed his sparkling blue eyes.
I wasn’t swayed by his gentlemanly
manners or even that sensual waterfall
of his fingers down my back.
It was his bookcase that caught my eye.
The reference books alone caused me to look
twice: art, music, mythology, quotations, symbols
and two continents’ worth of flowers, trees and birds.
Then, my heart was set aflutter by a whole
collection of world classics – Zola,
Tolstoy, Brontë, Euripides – lined up like
soldiers in matching red and white paperback.
(Beloved Jane – Austen, of course –
had a separate space of her own.)
And, the poetry – oh, I was swooning –
three full shelves, arrayed in alphabetical
order from Akhmatova to Yeats, passing Dante,
Frost, Larkin, Neruda and Plath along the way.
My resistance weakening, I came upon the dictionaries:
four European languages book-ended with various
Englishes on one side and, on the other –
taking up seven glorious inches of precious
oak plank – a matching pair of hardbound,
fine print Oxford English dictionary and thesaurus.
Finally, I was convinced as I basked in repetitions
of the sweet, reassuring subtitle: “The Complete Works.”
Reprinted from Acumen, 75. This poem is dedicated to David Olsen.
I hardly noticed his sparkling blue eyes.
I wasn’t swayed by his gentlemanly
manners or even that sensual waterfall
of his fingers down my back.
It was his bookcase that caught my eye.
The reference books alone caused me to look
twice: art, music, mythology, quotations, symbols
and two continents’ worth of flowers, trees and birds.
Then, my heart was set aflutter by a whole
collection of world classics – Zola,
Tolstoy, Brontë, Euripides – lined up like
soldiers in matching red and white paperback.
(Beloved Jane – Austen, of course –
had a separate space of her own.)
And, the poetry – oh, I was swooning –
three full shelves, arrayed in alphabetical
order from Akhmatova to Yeats, passing Dante,
Frost, Larkin, Neruda and Plath along the way.
My resistance weakening, I came upon the dictionaries:
four European languages book-ended with various
Englishes on one side and, on the other –
taking up seven glorious inches of precious
oak plank – a matching pair of hardbound,
fine print Oxford English dictionary and thesaurus.
Finally, I was convinced as I basked in repetitions
of the sweet, reassuring subtitle: “The Complete Works.”
Reprinted from Acumen, 75. This poem is dedicated to David Olsen.