subtext

Amid the books and cats in the front room,

I sit content within the labyrinth

I have wandered aimlessly through for years.

The familiarity of the ordered

spines lines up across the shelves as if fate

has spun out a net within each chapter

to script my thoughts, until they finally

arrived in this room defined by my books,

like old city walls to shelter my self,

and all I love, from the coming onslaught

of the sneering ignorance battling

obviously within me at each turn

of all the random pages I can read

within the growing shadows of the room.