Watching Him Read

Watching Him Read

He is the only person I know

who will read ancient Greek, the dictionary,

and a book about stars in the same day.

He emits an enviable stillness.

I take a photograph of this quiet,

ordinary pose.

.

The camera’s flash swallows

sofa, windows, a mahogany table

with a coffee cup, and his body

in jeans, a green cardigan,

and sneakers old as Ovid.

The medieval carols of King’s College

bleed their stained glass into

the pages of past and future,

the empty cup of the moment.

--first published in Poetry Salzburg, 2011