The Reading Room
Peeling brown walls, cracked paint
Floral wallpaper,
Flowers fading in late afternoon silence
Sunlight sifting through hovering motes of
dust
Tattered book laid
open
With yellowed pages and faint script
Grayed old man hunched over table
Illuminated by lamp, glowing genially
Sorrowful eyes intense and reddened
Delicate wrinkles tucked
Like flowers around his eyelids
Black slacks speckled with lint
Solitude among stacks of tomes
Words forming lilting voices in mind’s
theater
Images of ancient heroes cast on screen
Ships sailing into wine dark
Gilded by morning light
Helen’s radiance shining
Brighter than a thousand suns at
Eyes grow watery,
Sparkling in electric shine of lamp
Words blur into illegibility
Woman steps in softly,
Skirt swishing with each stride
Silky face and rose
blossom lips, angelic
The yearning written in the sparkle of his
iris
Her compelling aura
Fanning the flames of his desire
As she fades into the stacks
He folds the book back together
Gently as a butterfly closing its wings
Rising from the ruins of lost dreams
He departs the sanctum of legends
Like Odysseus setting off on his epic
journey
Her perfume scenting his passage
With sweet fragrance of lilac
