You surface from reading a book
And half the day is gone
Blear eyed, sofa sodden
Can you remember even half
Of what you avidly poured
Into a soul thirsty for distraction,
And for information that ‘might be useful’-
‘marriage and work are the great bulwarks against crime’,
‘heroin is mainly smoked these days
owing to its increased purity.’
(these two from a cop memoir)
And like heroin
I’ve been doing that almost all my life
And no doubt I’ve found a use for some of it
Usually as fillers for otherwise dull conversations
Filleting out the good bits for later
Standing around and prating about
The secrets of this and that
It annoys some and pleases others
Probably I’m neither ahead or behind
From this lifelong tic
Should I give up the reading?
The random book habit I seem stuck with?
It won’t go now, five decades on and into the sixth,
As I celebrate the odd fact,
Or better, the odd insight,
That lets you know you know,
And that you can rest easy now,
Go back to the sofa library
With a well earned cup of tea,
And a well thumbed book,
And out the window trees bending and arc-ing
In the wind, the summer storms again,
How many messages from this cycle of life
The same pattern growing stronger
Year by year, how many messages
Will I ignore?