ManicDDaily

(Book) Skywalker

Overcast.
Still, there’s sky in the air,
and, light on the blacktop
of this country road,
I say that what I’d like to be
is a person who walks all day.
Preferably holding a book, I add
with unusual frankness, to you
for whom the world outside
is usually enough–

And you, who knows what I do
when alone, especially in the City when not
in the fold of you–how I follow an arrow of page
through lines of print and people, cross blocks
of blocks, that is,
how I read, walking,

grow serious, saying,
you better watch out down there,
you’ll make yourself a target–

not understanding the cover
of cover,
the shield of
one’s own corner, carried,
how those there, yet not there,
(like the sky in this grey day’s air),
(I’m talking about characters) serve
as my personal pages,
while the page itself makes
my weather–
and how can anyone who holds
a small separate sky
in their hands, be harmed, I want to protest.

But don’t.
Don’t even tell you how surprisingly well
my feet read the street
with my other soles–

Because I must confess, thinking it through,
that wheeled fenders seem
extraordinarily insensitive
to sky,
so vow silently to look both ways
on those read streets,
and also, you know,
up–

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A rather odd poem for multi-taskers or escape artists (like myself).  I am talking here about reading a real book, not phone, which I have done for many many years.  I am posting  for the With Real Toads prompt of Ella about things you’ll never grow out of.