Open my heart
Like an old book
Read me
Like a familiar comfort
Run your finger
Down my softened spine

You are written
Between the lines
On every page
Folded in creases
Saving a place
For later
You have always been
My favorite story

reading can be a very dangerous thing,
you fall in love,
with people who don't exist,
and memories that never happened.

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

            fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

      beauty       .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
        (but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

          thou answerest


them only with

                          spring)