What is more majestic than reality?

I began to grow up in books,
in the promise of a world of wonders,
a place for meeting with adventure.
I imagined the look and feel and taste
of everything at once. It lived across
the page, what was more alive than that?

On a perfectly sunny morning,
somewhere on a winter road,
I almost passed a snowy owl waiting.
On a post high enough above the ground,
it sat, so still, a white that can’t be painted.
Only one of us thought to be awed.

I carry the books with me always,
knowing now they were filled with
descriptions of things seen and unseen,
of things waiting to be looked upon.