It's 6: 30 AM and I sit
at a round, marble table
in a little cafe,
Vivaldi in the background.

I open my book and read:
'There had been a wind during the night,
and all the loneliness of the world
had swept up out of the southwest.'

The patter of words
augments my pleasure.
My mind loves
to step, word by word,
along a path
cleared by another mind.

I imagine diagramming the sentence,
adjectives and prepositional phrases
running down diagonals
from the base line of subject, object, verb,
a straight, satisfying flow
from beginning to end.

Maybe it's the illusion of control —
is that what we get from reading?

Instead of the great, dark random abyss
from which to draw my next thought —
'The heater is humming. I like that
painting. Eating too much, lately.
Have to call mother'...
a road's lies paved and waiting.

The next sentence
in this story introduces a boy.
The boy hears the wind.
I can see him.
What magic is this?

From somewhere I don't understand
a picture forms, a story begins,
As from nothing,
A new created world,
and in that same, created realm
it evolves, and now that boy,
that wind, are part of me.

Max Reif

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-pleasure-of-reading/