Passages

Note to Reader

My parents were both avid readers and bed time was a chance for my mother to share her love of books with me.  It also a quiet time, no distractions, only my mother's voice.   That time from childhood would carry over into my adult years.  Here’s a poem about that entitled Passages

She made my bed in the morning
so, at night when I crawled in
​the covers were all arranged,
yet there was that reassuring ritualistic tuck.

Bed time stories,
poems when I was six,
were read to me 
when I was very young. 

Another safe passage
into the night, in a snug place;
I was never afraid
of the dark.

Those tucks, those words were there
for later passages
many foreboding
all in the dark.

I still have 
the books and a blanket.
When all is quiet in my head
I can still hear her voice - reading.

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The Magpie Cried by Ben Humphrey
Finishing Line Press p 7, 2013

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