Reading Aloud

"Want me to read a poem?" I asked, with a book in my hands.

"No," she said, as she lay down on the couch with her head on a pillow.

"I suppose you'll just fall asleep," I said. She nodded.

That's the way it always is. After a stanza or two, she's fast asleep, and I'm reciting to myself in the silence of the night. ...which if you think of it is a feature. So what if I mess up on the meter? So what if I stumble over the words? Why have I never realized this before? I opened the book to Canto I and began.

She smiled with her eyes still closed. After a stanza or two, her smile melted away as she fell fast asleep.

Yet I kept on, to Canto II. To the part where they met in the wood and she left him standing there alone. At which point Trudy woke from her sleep and moaned at the sadness. And then to Canto III where they kiss. Trudy smiled.

From time to time, the lines flowed over my tongue like water, and the phrasing and meter came faster than I could read the words, and I felt as if I were but a vessel thru which the verse was being spoken.

"Dave!" my brother shouted from the bedroom. "Go to bed!"

But I kept on, not only because Trudy was listening , but also because earlier in the day my brother was blasting the stereo and blowing leaves off the porch outside my window as I lay catatonic on the bed trying to get some rest. And as I remembered my aborted nap, my voice rose further as we went into Canto IV, where her father gets really, really mad.

And then that was it. Four cantos was enough. I'd had my fix. Maybe tonight I'll get a chance for more. Canto V awaits.

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