I can’t remember when I first heard those words
spoken again and again, at the end of a blurb
about a book I couldn’t wait to read
for just as Mister Burton said,
I shouldn’t take his word for it,
indeed.
And so I read and read and read some more
I read till the lights went out and the candles
wore, till the lace curtains caught fire
from one left lit, I read and read
that’s all there was to it
And then one day the words began to flow –
all my own, my own little world,
like flower after flower,
they unfurled
for the words that I’d read sprang seeds to create more
though this time, I wanted the words inside me
to soar, from the tips of my fingers to the ends of the earth
I read and I wrote, for all I was worth
I would have kept on reading even when there was no one
to tell me so, but for a man on the telly sharing new books
and stories I had yet to know,
he awoke the scribe that lived deep within
and now every child everywhere will have the same chance
I’d been given.