“The Reader” by Robert Bringhurst

Who reads her while she reads?  Her eyes slide

under the paper, into another world

while all we hear of it

or see is the slow surf of turning pages.

Her mother might not recognize her,

soaked to the skin as she is in her own shadow.

How could you then?  You with your watch and your tongue

still running, tell me: how much does she lose

when she looks up?  When she lifts

the ladles of her eyes, how much

flows back into the book, and how much

spills down the walls of the overflowing world?

Children, playing alone, will sometimes

come back suddenly, seeing what it is

to be here, and their eyes are altered.  Hers too.  Words

she’s never said reshape her lips forever.

Robert Bringhurst

“The Reader”

A New Anthology of Canadian Literature in English

Ed. Donna Bennett and Russell Brown