Dancing Words

When reading deep into the night: 'Till hours late, and still, and quiet,; Beneath a hemisphere of light.
The eyes grow bleary and grow thin: As drooping head and dropping chin; Predict that sleep will soon begin.
The words of text upon the page: Begin to weave and dance and play
As straining margins can not hold: The silent letters now grown bold.
The reader falls into a trance: As trains of thought join in the dance,
And chug and charge and billow steam,: Vehicles forged of waking dreams.
His dreams take substance, form, and height: And stand and strain with growing might.
Impossible new landscapes now: Slide quickly under beam and bow
The trains of thought are airplanes now,: Or sailing ships whose rising prows
Are jumping, leaping, learning how: In ways not thought of until now
To search, to seek, and to savor: Answers of another flavor,
As ordinary thoughts take flight: To roam the Universe this night.
And when the ship returns to berth,: The reader settles back to earth,
And wonders how he came to be: In chapter four, page ninty-three.
As he begins to read once more,: Somehow, somewhere, perhaps it's true
He knows more than he did before,: Though what it is he has no clue.
He only knows that it is time: To let himself drift off to sleep,
To close his eyes and rest his mind: Where skies are wide and oceans, deep.