Most times when I read poetry I read it out loud to myself, all alone in my bedroom, with the door closed; or with my cats, Simon and Minuet in bed with me. Ninety-nine percent of the time they seem to appreciate the cadence that’s singularly mine, as I lose us in a poet’s passion captured between pages.
If I pause in meditation or wonder over an exceptionally exceptional passage or phrase, Minuet turns her head, brow arched just like The Rock’s, when she cuts her green flecked eyes at me. I take that look to mean, “Go on human, give us more. We like your flow.” So I do.
I read until Simon starts snoring. It’s his seal of approval; proof that he’s been satisfactorily engaged—enchanted by his mistress’s vocal ear-scratching.
My cats like poetry read out loud. At least I believe that they do. Their mistress loves reading prose even more.
I don’t think I’ve ever read an entire book out loud since I stopped reading to my daughter when she was a girl who loved listening to stories told in her mama’s voice. That all ended in grade school, long after she’d learned to read to herself when she was three.
Of course, I read aloud favorite passages from books that make me heady with rhythms, flights of soaring, loops and back flips loosed from well-written paragraphs, sentences, and phrases. I whisper them out loud, enjoying their weight on my ear.
All caught up in ink on paper, I feel the pretty words. I see their colors, I taste their flavors; I gather their whispered interpretations to me.
And then, I found The One: Where Rivers Change Direction.
If I’d picked it up once, I’d picked it up at least five times. The images on the cover seemed to shift, making my eyes cross. Returning it to the, pile--I’d be off, in search of a “better read.” I wanted something that would grab me, reward me with high emotional dividends.
Then came the first time, after I’d chosen another, and walked past that table in the Barnes & Noble aisle, when pages fluttered. I heard (imagined?) faint thundering of hooves, the smell dust raised and left hanging in a herd’s wake. I know I heard neighing; I could have sworn I caught a flash of manes and tails from the corner of my left eye. It all made my pulse rev.
Once, I even heard my aunt Pauline ask me again, “Want me to show you how a horse bites corn?” I paused, smiled; but that’s all.
After that memories nudged hard, tugged me back to childhood days when I used to watch Grandpa Bud whistle, and his favorite roan, Old Red would trot across the pasture, stopping at the fence in a cloud of dust. Still, I smiled and passed.
The night after I dreamed of horses, I stopped straddling the fence. The next day I bought When Rivers Change Direction. Still wary, I used a 15 percent off coupon to justify buying a book I might never finish. Along with the 10 percent discount that comes with membership privilege, it was a steal.
I fell into the cover right off the bat. I counted the horses, over and over … tracing the angles, light and shadows that created whole beasts. Two colors: black and brown. Shapes that trick the eye into seeing abstract horses. Annoyance over the “poorly defined head and perspective” of one horse’s spine brought out the artist in me. Criticism. Meant even the cover got to me. Did it also expose a tiny bit of envy?
When I read: “I have read that, in Africa, when the body of an antelope, which all its life ate only leaves and grass and drank nothing but wild water, is first opened, the fragrance is almost too sweet, too delicate, too beautiful to be borne. MARY OLIVER, White Pine.” I thought I would weep out loud.
