Tuesday Twofer

                         By the Books

Oh, but by god yes I have read them,

read them all, and can only imagine Isolde

brushing back Tristan’s hair from his forehead

as they stand at the shore, or I like to think

that he tucks her hair behind her ears

before he holds her face in his hands,

then whispers those words offered

up like a prayer before lips meet,

or do I hear Sancho’s grumbling,

or the low rolling vowels, Laura extolled

virtue by virtue—surely some professor

has reduced that obsession to a nihilist’s pinprick—

or Darcy chosen,

perhaps Palamon unhorsed,

at last shrewd Kate kissed,

or in faith am I finally to be taken

hand in hand, by my Beatrice, faint illumined

beneath a starry sky, to believe, at last,

by heart the world to be forever well.

Ladson 2013

Reading Aloud

For so long have I read aloud

that I am no longer sure that even the voice in my head

when I am alone is completely my own. 

A question, a comment, a heartbeat,

the spark sent to my brain is just as likely to o’er leap

my own thoughts and stumble into someone else’s lines.

Oh, surely I diverge from my path—viva la difference—

and I hold tarrying no crime until too late (of late),

duty bound, shall I come unbound—shall not render

unto Prince Hal?

I yearn to divine a sense of self,

in a sort of madness much aware perhaps of too much,

and the striving,

and the seeking,

but undiscovered country still awaits,

isles ahead the mermaids sing.

I only attend, no commands to give,

wry smiles undone, until sing I of the body eccentric,

to yield, in such silence as may be wrought,

and then, and then, and then the rest.

Ladson 2013