Poem of the Day: “Reading Companions” by Mary Soon Lee, Poet of the Week

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to present “Reading Companions” by Mary Soon Lee, Poet of the Week.  A brief biography of Ms. Lee may be found here:  http://eretzsongs.blogspot.com/2015/03/poet-of-week-mary-soon-lee.html.

Reading Companions

Mary Soon Lee

A house should be lined with bookshelves,

paper rows of old friends standing guard

against a sudden craving for a taste of Venice --

phrases poling you down the Grand Canal

past pages of crumbling palaces, past bedtime

till you find yourself sitting in a cold room,

stiff, the mug beside you empty,

and the book done.

     

A house should be lined with bookshelves:

Shakespeare, Yeats, Thucydides, Tolkien,

plays, poems, histories real and imagined;

one shelf for calculus, another for home repairs.

And for a few years, if you are lucky,

put the children's books on the bottom shelves

so you can sit with a reading companion

plumped in your lap for the adventures of Pooh.

Poet's Notes:  My old books are like old friends. Many of the books that I read as a child have traveled with me through the years from city to city. Yesterday I just finished reading Watership Down to my daughter. The cover is falling off it now, but it has been with me for nearly forty years, and I don't want to replace it with a new edition or an electronic version.

Editor’s Notes:  Reminds me of my own house.  Love it!  And my thank you to the poet for including Tolkien along with Shakespeare.