reading – Page 2 – don't confuse the narrator

comfort reading

Somewhere in a lock-up unit in Spain, in a box surrounded by other boxes filled with books, is my copy of The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.

It’s a simple, moral story of love and truth, where faith and magic work together to set the world to rights; It’s also one of the books I turn to when I’m in need of comfort. (At least it was before I had to leave it in storage and it will be again, I am sure.)
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what are you reading?

I don’t know what the book was that caused this damselfly to go bug-eyed and blush right down to the tip of his tail, but I think he looks as if he wants to tell someone about it:

new year, new thoughts

A few years back, I wrote the post what’s in the poem, where I said that I didn’t like how poets tend to use an explanatory “blurb” between pieces at readings to tell the audience how they should understand the poem rather than giving listeners the chance to respond for themselves.

This week, though, I attended a poetry reading by Michael Hulse and saw just how well that inter-poem blurb can be used.
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no movement but sound

I went out early today, but the birds must all have been awake long before me and when I left the house the noise in the street was startlingly loud for a Sunday morning. I suppose they were busy discussing air pressure and wind speed, temperature and flight paths or whatever it is that birds talk about before they get moving in the morning.

There was so much sound, but no movement and not a single bird to be seen even though the trees are bare of leaves and they must surely have been visible as dark blotches among the branches.

Telegraph pole silhouetted against sky at daybreak

I remember thinking as a child that the insulators on telegraph poles were birds perching; I reckon it was a reasonable mistake.
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Easter gifts

It’s Easter and I’ve realised that I don’t remember any of the Easter eggs I was given as a child, though I’m fairly sure there must have been some and I’m sure I was quite excited about them at the time.

Later on, I may have been given chocolates, flowers or other gifts by friends and lovers; no doubt they put a dutiful amount of thought into the choosing and the giving.

Perhaps I even gave presents to other people. If I did, though, I don’t remember.

In fact, from all the Easter gifts given and received during more than fifty years, I only remember one – the book in the picture.

The dedication inside shows just how long ago I was given it:

Half a century from now, how many people will reach for their e-reader and bring up a digital file that will have the power to connect them to the past in the way this book connects me?