Reading Dickens

--Michael Waters

Not long after the war, my father

  bought, by mail, the complete set

    of the works of Charles Dickens,

each book bound in black and red

  imitation leather, the titles

    embossed in gold.

The set filled a small bookcase

  near an overstuffed chair

    where my father spent

languid evening in lamplight,

  feet propped on the hassock,

    while David Copperfield

and honest Nicholas Nickleby

  fought their unsure way

    through the wicked world.

He might have imagined me,

  his only son, not yet born,

    on his pay, learning to read.

Each time he finished a book,

  he slipped a dollar

    between the gilt-edged pages--

some nights, the money low,

  he and my mother bounced

    before the bookcase, shaking

each volume, the few bills

  falling, enough for dinner

    or the double feature.

Decades later, reading Dickens,

  I imagine those early years,

    their slow stroll home,

her arm circling his waist,

  the whistling, papery leaves,

    the bath she drew before bed

while he waited downstairs, reading

  Dickens happy to not be

    living some great adventure.