This room, shelved and stacked with books,
with serried rows and tabled piles of history,
mystery, memoir, of prose and poetry.
This room, ours, where we two sit or sometimes lie
by lamplight in the evening, windowed sky by day,
together reading.
This room, where we read from pages
out aloud to one another, and while my husband
reads to me, I watch his hands.
One hand holds a book, the other turns the pages,
his slender fingers careful, slow. I think that’s how
I came to love him first, watching him with books.
We sit here now with sunlight sliding in on us,
glossing gilded titles, shining on my husband’s face.
His left hand forms an awning for his reading eyes
above a murder mystery I read recently. He turns to me,
says who he thinks the perpetrator is. I swallow No
and simply smile. He’ll change his mind next chapter.
This room, these books, with bookmarks pointing us
to favourite pages, favourite poems brimming with
the lyrical delight of gathered words,
with notes to one another inside covers
and folded into bookmarks—
For your fortieth, with love. For our twenty-fifth.
This room, where we read each day to share
the lives and thoughts of others, other places, other times,
while being just we two and here and now.