Home for me has always been
Walled in dusty book jackets,
Captured on musty yellowing pages.
I leapt through the looking glass
With Alice, finding a kindred spirit
In search of escape to a happier land.
I spent hours in the garret
Sitting next to Jo as we both
Dreamed our literary dreams.
I stood beside Dorothy
On her tentative first steps
Down the yellow brick road.
I chased penguins through the basement
And jumped through sidewalk drawings.
I juggled a fish, a dish, a cake, and a rake
With Sally and Conrad on a rainy afternoon.
I searched the back of the wardrobe
Looking for a magical passage,
Seeking an audience with Aslan.
Even as an adult I still check
Each dewy morning spider web
For a friendly message from yesterday,
Knowing that whenever I feel
The urge to travel back home,
I only need turn the page.
~~~ This poem was written for a prompt offered up over at Poetic Bloomings asking us to write a poem about home. Also linked up for Open Link Monday over at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads.
21 comments:
How I would like to get a message on a spider web. Shades of Charlotte. Lovely poem. k.
I enjoyed this very much, its many hints of believable magic. Excellent.
Mary, you don't know how much I love this poem! Its concept and the way you expressed it. It is wonderful when 'home' can be anywhere as long as you have a book!
Home in the stories, very nice. So many of these have moved out of 'popularity' that my children may never discover them. Sad
A wonderful companion it had always been, a book! But wait up! The iPad, tablet and even a touchscreen cell phone are now spoilers! Great write, Mary!
Hank
Conrad! how did you know that's his name?!
LOL, I'll admit I pulled Conrad's name from the live-action movie, thought is sounded better in the line instead of "Sally and her brother."
excellent juggling of authors and texts...and very true for many of us.kudos!
Fantastic! I , too, have made many journeys between the covers of a book.....still traveling!
I love this... it takes me back through time (and books) and very happy memories. Thank you.
I love the part about checking spider webs for messages. Lovely piece!
This book lover loved your poem!!!
The pages hold a lot of magic and adventures ...we can travel surely with just these books ~
This is delightful. Books open wonderful portals though the looking glass or wardrobe or any other place we might wish to go. (As I child, I loved The Twelve Dancing Princesses by the Brothers Grimm, about the princesses who escaped through a trap door in their bedroom floor to dance the night away.) One could never ask for a better place to call home than a book.
This is a place where most of us writers have visited and considered never leaving. And pulling Conrad out like that....brilliant, I have never seen the movie so I was amazed at your magic. I'm always amazed at your magic.
This is perfection!! I love what you've done here!! I think this should be posted in ALL libraries! So very comforting.
" spent hours in the garret
Sitting next to Jo as we both
Dreamed our literary dreams. "
I did, too! :)
Lost in the wordform and our imagination :)
"Home for me has always been / walled in dusty book jackets" --- How wonderful! Mine too! And then as you continue in short vignettes, I see the books in order on the shelves. This poem seems personal because I know all of the books (and I am writing a semi-autobiographical one now called "Alice in Wonder"). It is a gift to record for the younger generations what we loved, and its only answer is a poem full of the younger generations' answers, like vampires and avengers. Golly. I am adding this poem to the list I have of poems I cannot live without.
Me too! Me too! This is home, my books and I...love this!
Aren't we readers lucky creatures? How can one not be?
This is pure delight! I printed it out and stuck it in the cover of Charlottes Web ;) the first book I read aloud to my first little boy almost 18 years ago when he was two!
Really, this is splendid.
Post a Comment