Some Books
by Theodora Goss

There are some books I return to again and again,
the way I return to a beloved house
where I was a child cutting out paper dolls
I had drawn myself, creating their elaborate outfits
for the imaginary tea parties they would attend,
or where I myself would host tea parties
attended by a stuffed lion and assorted animals,
some of whom preferred their tea out of acorn cups,
some out of chipped porcelain,
some of them wearing felt hats decorated with flowers
made of tissue paper, others wearing berets
I had crocheted from yarn discarded by my mother,
and all of whom were inordinately fond
of oatmeal raisin cookies.

In the house there were a number of enchanted places,
such as, for example, under the bed, or the closet
beneath the stairs, or inside the yellow tent
of the unpruned forsythia bushes, or up the pine tree
where three branches radiating in a regular pattern
formed a series of steps to an arboreal country.
The sofa cushions transformed into a fort,
and at night, when I lay in bed, outside my window
the wind would whisper, Come out, come out,
and sometimes, in dreams, I did.

I lift those books down from the shelf, then climb
between their covers, tucking myself in,
while the paper dolls whisper the latest gossip,
the porcelain cups clink with a promise of tea parties,
and the stuffed lion roars
in a garden filled with the yellow cascades
of unpruned forsythia bushes in early spring.

(The image is The Tea Party by Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema.)