I Am So Tired of Reading

I Am So Tired of Reading

Hemingway’s not really my type,

but Austen with tea and a Lorna Doone

is just fine on a cold afternoon near the fire.

I revisit Brideshead with its ennervated young men

and women bored with their own glam.

Dante emerges from the Inferno to take the air,

while Moby Dick sprays from its mournful

blowhole the seawater of old sailors

and redemption.  When War and Peace

becomes too much, or even the soulful longings

of Uncle Vanya for the old days of genteel

luxury, Frost swings me to heaven on a branch

until I fall somewhere between Kafka’s Castle

and Allende’s House of the Spirits,

where I fork a lizard on a plate served up

by an Indian who rides a stuffed llama

in the Count’s studio for the nightly photo shoot.

So please, God, give me back the days

of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys

before I hear Midnight’s Children dancing

to Ragtime, Oliver Twisting with Ivanhoe,

while my Beloved drinks Nectar in a Sieve and

a Woman Warrior relinquishes her weapons,

steps into a small boat and rows To the Lighthouse;

but oh, I am tired of rowing, as The Eye of the Storm

looms ahead like Hamlet’s ghost, and Sister Age

wags a welcoming finger, but You Can’t Keep

A Good Woman Down, they always say, so this being

A Comedy of Errors anyway, I retreat to The Magic

Mountain, looking forward to A Hundred Years of Solitude.