Words

She loved poetry

(or so she said)

and collected words

like a librarian collects books;

resting them on shelves,

turning them, moving them,

rearranging them, dusting them

with feathers of quills;

viewing their marvellous curls

over pages of pages

from white to cream to sepia-stained,

but never reading the map,

only writing vast hill-forts of messages

sent out in sixes and sevens,

May-Days of moments

scribbled longhand, roughhand,

then, oh, to be mistress of the printed word,

when alchemy of transformation forged

typeset black across pale luminosity

creating that particular pattern,

satisfying something inside

that rang angel bells

when it appeared, eons into the gazing future,

within that Bible of all literary journals -

a poetry magazine.