Thoughts on Reading

Common hand may slow
Yet deep text
is potent
hermetic
until opened.
I open myself my poem.

There's something in this
Wordless latency
Some thing visual
a shape
I sense yet
cannot see
Like the mussels
nearly motionless
that canal
Deep in the stillness below
Sun on the moving water
clear.

The text is unwritten
The unwritten me
alive
ephemeral
full of gods
and sleepy garden fragrance
and sudden praise
of tumbled sparks
that ripple at play like children.

Sometimes it seems we've lost
The way to dwell
simply
in the text
where skin meets sun and water
Restful
adrift As above
leaping in the cresting wave
her breasts appear
like two sculpted gift shells
Presented to me for love.

Though the commitment chafes
And reading is not easy
Paradoxically, at ease
One reads
well.