Reading a paper book—a poem

Your eye skips down the centre
of a paper page
like a pebble over ocean.
You can see what lies ahead
you have perspective
and memory and speed
until you stop mid-hop
on an island that unfurled

an island that you nearly missed
a sentence like no other
for chiaroscuro and transitions
and edges.
Stand on it. Handle it.
Give it a kiss.
Every sentence in the world
is made of beads in boats

but some shuffle off
into bar graphs or petticoats.
You are startled by the sweetness
of this, the only time
you’ll read it for the first time
seeing how it nearly rhymes
and buttons like a pearl
to a paragraph.

That sentence is a sign
you will forget and yet
you plunge like a glutton
deep into the world of the book.

Rachel McAlpine cc by 2.0

Reading This Thin Now by Jo Thorpe. Ping!

When I say a special sentence may “nearly rhyme” I’m not only talking about rhyming as a sound. Perhaps the sentence “rhymes” with something in the reader’s experience. Or with something already foreshadowed in the book. Or with an idea or a philosophy… Or… Or… (Fill in the gaps any way you like.)