Tuesday, July 28, 2009: On the Street….Striped Right, Florence

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The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
-Wallace Stevens, “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm”

Red or blue ribbon is sewn into the spines
Of some books. Satin leeches that dribble
Out of the gold-edged pages, and slither
Into the pages that you close and put away.
Later, when you nudge the book from its shelf
Or stack, do the pages fall open like a gown
Unfastening, falling to the floor, revealing
The message you sent yourself: begin again here.