Book and Screen

It’s mostly someone

long dead who gets curious

all over again, who once told

a book, the book

picked clean to glow

on a website now, an address

with double slashes in it.

Suddenly I love

one detail: the way they harnessed

horses or hammered

copper, what seed — cardamom, rye — 

kept its small heart aloft

for a millennium.

Voices in that

dark ago when I open

to room light, lamp

or window on book — old friend — 

or the new computer screen.

It’s not technology, either way.

It’s something

in the brain first, an inkling. Not yet

yours to know. Behind that

little hallways in

sleep. The walking,

every door.