Books Poem by Conor Dowd

When a book is written
it is mine
and from time to time
(depending on my frame of mind)
I take a meaning that I choose to find
but I often wonder what the author
really had in mind.

And I sometimes start to lose the plot,
of course, quite literally and more -
I sometimes find I tend to stray
when reading toward the end
as the chapters bend and then give way...
but I always find my way again.

All the books and poems I've gathered
sit confidently on shelves
and they've kept their meanings hidden
and largely to themselves.

I love to re-read poems and books -
the ones that are like old friends -
those that grow mellow and ripen with age
and you grow to understand...

The kind that you meet in your twenties
and you read them day and night
when you don't even know who you are
though some day you feel that you might.