She reads by the light of a guttering candle <br />and likes the feel of each page's gilt edge <br />as she lifts it slightly at the corner, readying <br /> <br />herself to turn it. If the wind whips <br />the sycamore branches outside her window, <br />if her nightgowned shoulders shudder once <br /> <br />from a sudden chill, so much the better, <br />and the book must tell of children toiling <br />for bread and pennies in a textile mill, <br /> <br />or tender brothers doomed to sharpen <br />their bayonets in opposing armies, <br />or a family of refugees, dust <br /> <br />in their mouths, gazing with longing at the far <br />shore of a river. And I long only <br />to be the author of that book she reads <br /> <br />whose page glows from the same dim <br />flame that illuminates her face, <br />the author whose thought she contemplates <br /> <br />as she touches a fingertip to a word <br />to mark her place and turns her head <br />toward the kettle that has begun to whistle.<br /><br />Chris Forhan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/billet-doux-3/
