Endlessly Rocking

She treasures the book. It never leaves her hands leather bound sweet & soft as suede She caresses it & it caresses her her fingertips trace the gold embossed letters LEAVES OF GRASS she can’t read but has memorised each line each page each word knows how & where it all goes learnt by heart amazing all the illiterate ears that hear her she amasses all the voices of anyone who ever read it to her as I read it to her now this the gift of a long ago love (now long dead) who read it to her first a young woman madly in love unschooled in words and flesh being touched with a passion a naked desire for words being read to by her first and only love the words live inside her undaunted by old age she sings of her self her lips follow mine line after line and when I stop she... ...continues on and then waits for my voice to catch up I follow after her stumbling through the years She strokes the inscription as if it were a person kisses the letters as if they were the lips that first read to her TO MY DEAREST EMILY LOVE ALWAYS JOHN 1933. “John...John...John! ”