Poem: July 17, 2019

Reading with the Kids

You read to them because it's intimate,
huddling close together, just before sleep,
around the bright pages, breathing the pop
and crack of familiar words, reciting together
the incantations that bring the images out
of the pages and into the space between you.

Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave had
twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave...

And you read to them because in this circle
words detach themselves from your lives,
unstick themselves from the ordinary and hard
surfaces, and they become objects to stack
and rearrange, ideas to be tasted, sounds
to be smeared like paint, laughed at and erased,
passed back and forth, kept when they resonate.

Sophies love tacos, you say.

And for a few years, it's a lovely way to play.