Mom, she says, I don’t know what it was about that book,
but the pages were falling out and it smelled old
and I think it cast a spell on me.
And I recall the first time I read Emily,
an old cloth book with the text debossed,
how I ran my fingers over the words
and felt them as I read them:
“As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—”
Mom, she says, I didn’t even understand
a single word I read, but I couldn’t stop reading.
And now, I think that book is haunting me.
We are making her bed just before she sleeps,
and I tug on the covers to straighten them.
Yes, I say, her words are like spells.
I memorized that poem, though I was
too young to know of “courteous
and harrowing grace.” I knew only
that when I said the words, they gave
me such an openness, a wideness, a delight,
as if morning found its way into my chest,
and now, thirty years later, the early light
still touches me, still thralls.
The bed remade, she slips beneath
and I lay at her feet and for a time we read.
I want to talk more about Emily,
but the spell is her own and I don’t
want to trespass her magic,
the wonder she feels.
Perhaps someday she, too,
will read these lines,
“Our Summer made her light escape
into the beautiful.”
and know herself more beautiful
for having let them touch her.
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