This novel,

in this third or hundredth read,

the héros,

the villains,

the Loved,

all the chapters in the flow,

feel as real,

as though

part of the evolutionary spinning

of my heart.

And in those moments when,

in the natural, multiple interruptions of a life,

I cease

(to read or be)

for a call to supper

or for another lifetime to suffer

or to die a while…

when I fold down that page

to mark my progress through that tale

I find an old crease

where I have, at that moment

in my first or hundredth sojourn

through the story,

paused at that page

in my second or fiftieth read,

And I KNOW

I have been here before

and am having this same moment,

a wedding, a birth,

(of a son, Thank God!)

or crying the same tears

for a dying of a love or loved one

(or me!)

during a forth or twenty-seventh chance

to learn some lesson

or to savor,

at last,

some hard fought victory on that page

or to survive my failure

at my embattled age

to be a sage

rather than a fool.

I hope to read this tale a final time,

perhaps a few centuries hence,

(if I continue in my dense

pigheadedness)

or to achieve, at last,

my destiny in print

or in my life.

Perhaps, even, to open a new book.

To hear the new bound binding

creak a bit

when first I crack it open

to begin to parse

the mystery

of its first sentence

to discover whether epic autobiography

or farce.