Climbing Into Books

I spent my summer worrying,
everything distorted, inverted, wrong,
but when I read,
everything else fell away:
I climbed up into books
like an addict,
like the child I once was,
stealing minutes, hours,
reading whole books in a day—
lightweight, insignificant, unimportant books
that would never lead to clever witticisms
to share with friends
after supper.
Instead they saved me.
Slowly I came back down
from their trivial, frivolous heights
to sit here at my computer,
autumn on its way,
almost myself again.