Give Me a Book

Give me a book and long tall grass,
There will I look as the hours pass.
To other places I can see;
To other faces strange to me.

In black and white they fill my head
With men and women~ vanished, dead~
Of hope and fear, of wish and need.

The world stands still.
I, breathless, read.
And in their history I see
The untold mystery of me.

~ Myra Cohn Livingston

Hopkins, L. B., ed. (1990). Good books, good times! New York: HarperTrophy.