Rendezvous Between the Covers

Since the world has moved on from where we used to meet
let’s go back and get lost in a good book.

Let’s meet at the dance, La Merlaison
(Three Musketeers, Oxford World’s Classic Edition page 205)

and while the courtiers in rich brocade and heavy silk velvets
twirl ungainly through complex figures

we’ll slip away behind the page. Let them
stare and try to count the diamond studs. Let the red cardinal

conspire against his prey the blackbird (merle means blackbird),
it’s nothing to us, kissing inside the fabric

of the novel. Shh. Here comes D’Artagnan
on the stair. He’ll go behind the arras and kiss Anne’s hand

and take a ring from her finger—but he won’t see us, we’re
no part of Dumas’ story, it’s only in our

own imagination that we are here, we’ll
be gone the moment anyone tries to turn to the next page.

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