Poetry on Loan - a Poem

A Reader's Request
by Jacob Polley

To be conducted across continents
and centuries, under regimes and their rules

to be led through palaces, to shelter in tents,
to see through dungeon walls and prison cells

to laugh with another or have love turned over
like a stone, to be shown what blindly writhes there

to have his head filled with treasure
or his heart beggared and laid bare

to take down what's lain hidden on a shelf,
to be free to open it, enter it

and be alone no longer with himself
to be unsurprised by the easy fit

of prison cells, palaces, continents
of grief's moonscapes and love up close, in print.