Back To My Books (To Learn)

I picked up the marbles that had fallen to the floor

and put them all back in my mouth.

I closed my lips around them

it’s time to be silent again.

I’ve learned that I am not skilled at this

gleaning the meaning of words.

I line them up neatly in rows

and place them on page after page.

I read them over line by line

time and time again.

I follow the storyline, hear the characters sing

yet I come back to this place again.

I’ve come to find that it’s really just me

that I spend too much time dreaming alone.

That the pictures I paint inside of my mind

are never the way things are.

The colors and textures confuse me

I see and feel them as they touch me.

The problem again is perspective

I’m not standing where they are.

Those who tell the stories to me

that keep me vividly rapt.

I don’t always see where they are standing

as I am mesmerized by words.

I thought I could give the colors names

and place them in jars on a shelf.

So that when it came time to talk about them

they could be used as cues.

Like signals, perhaps, or points of reference

but that sounds silly now even to me.

So the marbles and brushes and paper and pens

are going back into that box.

I am going back to my books to learn

and maybe this won't happen again.