Becoming One With the Words

Examining the spaces

Where the writing ceases

And the feelings begin their ascension

In between the rows of assembled characters

Hidden from plain sight

Their breath

Gives little warmth or direction

To those whose examination

Is but cursory and subjective

While others who approach

Each written work

With the tenderness of a scholar

Opening a frail text

From the halls of antiquity

Handling each page with reverence

Not of the religious type

But honorable all the same

For words are not meant to be worshipped

But instead consumed

Often and on lengthy voyages

Taking time to fully immerse and contemplate

Each syllable

Reveals perhaps a shadow

Slipping from its reclusive hiding place

Behind a punctuation mark

Or from beneath a hyphen

And confidently reading line after line

Unencumbered by and by

For the understanding that revelations

Are not always scheduled

And some never take form

Substance is in the eye of the beholder

When holding space

Or turning pages

And the real collection of imagination

Overtaking

As a vine growing in a fertile garden

Entwining the surroundings

While the immersion of the senses

Completes a transformation

Separating the darkness from the light

In an ever-widening chasm

Where the feelings show their magic

And the characters

Are left crowded on the vellum

Huddled in perfect stanzas

Surrounded by the emptiness

Of the margins