Aural Shelf

Aural Shelf
(after Frost, after fatigue, after Pynchon
and entropy)

Now that my eyesight weakens,
I’ve stopped reading physical books.
Digital and audio ones spare my eyes,
pamper my ears.

I still wear reading glasses,
but now I move
thumb and index finger apart
on the touchscreen—
everything enlarges,
becomes legible.

I listen too—
slower to savor,
faster to skim,
or at the pace intended.

I once heard Robert Frost read 
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Even on that scratchy recording,
his wizened voice
sounded bored, tired—
as if reading to himself,
then to others,
too many times.

He was a weary parent
droning a child’s favorite bedtime story
for the hundredth time.
Sure, the child slept,
but maybe they dreamed
of other woods.

Yet a good voice actor
can turn a good book
into an aural statue—
perfectly rendered,
seen in wondrous ways
in the imagination.

Full of the delight of first reading,
and the nuance
felt in rereading.

And yet, I still browse the stacks
of B&N
or Barnes and Chernobyl,
my disdainful younger self
used to call it—
these irradiated aisles
full of memory.

Back then,
I thought bound books
were radioactive—
ways of reading
and thinking
that split into meanings.

Every book
was a nuclear bomb
spreading fallout
inside me—
wastelands
taking years
to decay—
and
some—
never.

A book
I thought
out of print,
caught
my eye.

Its cover pulsed,
with a granite mountain,
and a shadow figure
ascending it.

I heard its beauty
being
read aloud
inside.

The pages flickered,
with green bird lands
and thunderclaps
in illegible captions
that refused
my finger’s expanse.

Then,
the voice
glitched
between
narrator
and noise.

Enraptured,
compelled,
I bought the hardbound,
carted and purchased the Kindle version,
downloaded its Audible file—

spent the afternoon
syncing the trinity:
picture on printed page,
the words properly sized,
adjusting the breath of each sentence
in perfect flow with image and language
until it was more than
a 24 frames per second
reality.

I performed it three times.
Then,
I put it back
on my aural shelf

before the language
became familiar—
and I became
a bored Robert Frost.