Passing over

Divine Pleasure of Reading travels
To the world of imaginations
Perceived by the eye that decodes
Words thru a rapid firing of cells
At the behest of the frontal lobe
Mustering the neuronal minions
To the seat of the noble spirit of
Feelings breathing life into letters
Linking to the sovereign experiences
With the intellectual flexibility to the
Fore to prepare your soul to pass over
To the beyond and the far beyond thither
In a brand new mind evolving evermore.

• AUTHOR’S FOOTNOTE:  “Passing over” as used herein is interpreted as immersing yourself in the world of a book you are reading or you have read by identifying yourself with the characters and/or the authors. The term was coined by the late American Roman Catholic priest and theologian John S. Dunne (1929-2013). He referred it to a spiritual experience of entering into the psyches of others and building empathy with them in order to understand their woes, travails, and frailties. This simple but profound concept of spiritual togetherness is wonderfully cogently  applied to the principles and development of our reading brain as the apotheosis of why we read in Proust and the Squid by Dr. Maryanne Wolf. Hence this seemingly riddle-like poem of mine reflects a meaning of reading that depicts a reading process starting from the sensory perception of texts to decoding the perceived texts through reptinotophic organization in neuronal circuits, and to the understanding of the texts in our brain, the final destination to get ready for a journey into the minds of others.