a wonderful read

thirteen moons, 

by Charles Frazier

I finish the book,

close it for a final time,

and hold it in my hands,

reverentially,

that book has a solid feel to it,

a feel of Autumn, of fruition,

a feel of rightness and revelation,

a feel of a friend who has helped me

know how his and my journey

are the same and also wildly different,

to know of the life he described 

with heart-wrenching eloquence

is to know more of my own life,

to plummet further down into the darkness,

to erupt even higher into the light,

to savor the moments in between,

while still holding close the sorrow

and letting it increase the sweetness

that can also come,

I took days to finish this book, for a second time,

slowly working through a paragraph, a page,

many times I read a book

for a compelling story, a diverting puzzle,

when I finish these books

I feel like surfing to a new channel—

vaguely satisfied, vaguely dissatisfied,

today I felt a satisfying wholeness to the read,

a synchronicity of my own life

with the fiction of a novel

more real and accessible than the story

I seek to write with my own life.

by Henry H. Walker

December 5, ‘16