Poetry Wednesday: Between the Sheets

It’s National Poetry Month in the States, so I thought I’d post a favorite poem or two each Wednesday until we run out of April.

I had to share this one first—I’ve only recently discovered  Ellen Wade Beals, but this poem hooked me with it’s bleary-eyed, momentarily-sated booklust:

Between The Sheets
(Ellen Wade Beals)

I confess,
to sleeping with books,
covers spread open and waiting –
they beckon,
a fluttering of leaves
like lapping tongues.
Oh, their smooth embossed spines.

The tawdry ones are good for a night.
Rumpled, smelling of smoke,
usually borrowed and broken.
They’re anybody’s book,
sorry, sticky maybe,
used and returned.

The worldly wise leave an exotic taste,
others have the common language
of guttersnipes but
provide good tale.
Some disappoint –
summer flings, read
and dismissed,
important as the sand
shaken from my shoe.

I can’t help but embrace them all,
stroking the ones I love,
smelling their words.
After a good read, I’m bushed.
Lying across my chest,
the latest listens to my heartbeat
while I take in what else it says.

Who says reading is a non-contact sport?

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