Close Reading From Afar

In my college days,
a professor with thick glasses
had professed to teach me
the art that he called
"close reading"

in a room

overflowing

with books

bound red and green and brown and black -

a verdant jungle of the written word.

I have been on this clipper seven months.

I read A Confederacy of Dunces 

between New Orleans and Lisbon 

and in a dusty bar I bartered it 

for a dog-eared copy
of The Book of Sand

written in its original Spanish.

I did not enjoy it much,

but later,
in Tunis,

I bought a Spanish - English dictionary

and enjoyed it much more.

In Jeddah I traded the dictionary for 

One Thousand and One Arabian Nights

and four pomegranates.

And  it kept me awake 

for the 34 nights

that brought me to Shanghai

where I picked up a collection of sonnets.
They were sweet
and reminded me of love
left long ago.

The pomegranates, too, 

were delicious. 

Then there were dirty mags

with their hearts ripped out

navigation charts

engine repair manuals

and a yellowed

copy of the Law of the Sea.

We had a bible, too,
for funerals,

but I was in between
curiosity about life
and fear of death
and it held no appeal
for me.

You don't know 

how to close-read

until it is a necessity -

not a choice.
And I feel sorry
for my old professor -
looking through
a magnifying glass
at his jungle of words.

He has never been lost 

in a word-less desert
with only a single

paperback

oasis.

Or cradled to sleep

a single word 

in a rolling cabin

and seen its

dreams
of faraway
lands.