For Valerie: Novels and Utah on her Birthday

For Valerie, who took me to Utah and encouraged me to avoid this fate with The Hunger Games. I thank her for being so wonderful, for sharing so much with me, and wish her a very wonderful 26th birthday.

 

Once Again I Fail to Read an Important Novel 

Instead, we sit together beside the fountain,

the important novel and I.

We are having coffee together 

in that quiet first hour of the morning,

respecting each other's silences

in the shadow of an important old building

in this small but significant European city.

All the characters can relax.

I'm giving them the day off.

For once they can forget about their problems—

desire, betrayal, the fatal denouement—

and just sit peacefully beside me.

In the afternoon,

at lunch near the cathedral,

and in the evening, after my lonely, 

historical walk along the promenade,

the men and women, the children

and even the dogs

in the important, complicated novel

have nothing to fear from me.

We will sit quietly at the table

with a glass of cool red wine

and listen to the pigeons 

questioning each other in the ancient corridors.

by George Bilgere

From Haywire. © Utah State University Press

Courtesy The Writer’s Almanac