But I don’t get to garden very often because my family moves
so much. It’s hard to plant something knowing you’re going to be leaving in a
couple months, and the next tenants might just kill it. Or maybe I lived in an
apartment, and I was limited to house plants. Either way, I try to make the
most of my garden while I have it. I enjoy quiet afternoons where I can sit on
the porch and just read a good book surrounded by my potted plants.
Should it be any surprise that when I wrote a poem about
reading, plants sprung up in between the lines? Probably not.
The To-Be-Read
List
Picking up my next book
is more random than I would
have planned.
Flowers bloom in their own time—
daffodils at the start of spring,
tulips near the middle,
and chrysanthemums signal the end
of the final growing season.
Yet the leaves of a book
spring up
of their own accord—
a snow-filled novel pops up in
spring,
collections of summer poems warm me
in winter,
and autumn stories mimic the trees
outside.
When I plan to read a novel—
hooked by the blurb
or drawn by the cover—
I can never tell if or when it will
happen
upon me
whether in the library or at the
bookstore or online.
Maybe I cannot find it.
Maybe I cannot stop finding it,
and I forget I wanted it at all.
But when they come,
the flighting books—the annuals—
are here,
then gone.
And the perennials last like
dandelions—
no matter how many times
somebody tries to dig them up,
they always come back.
***
Let’s chat! What did you think of the poem? Is your
To-Be-Read List random or planned? What is something you might compare your
reading habit to?
Similar poems: Silent Words, Dandelion Seeds, and
Pile of Words
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