My escape from this madness I find in a book,
Away from the clamour, wherever I look.
From noise and confusion, from chaos and pain
To an island of stillness, away from the strain

To a place of imagination, of beauty and light,
Of excitement and heroes, of wrong against right,
Where characters gather, alive in my mind,
And love conquers hatred, and light leaves darkness behind.

Solitary, antisocial, some people may say,
But reading a book need not be that way.
I connect with like minds, we discuss and explore,
And my horizons are broadened again and then more.

For each book is a doorway, each page is a road,
To lives never lived and where words are a code.
I can wander through history, sail across distant seas,
Climb mountains, fight battles, go wherever I please.

If only more people were willing to read,
To travel beyond what they know and believed.
To listen to voices from places far away,
And see through other eyes, even just for a day.

The beauty is this, you need not leave your chair,
Yet somehow you journey to worlds everywhere.
And when you return, though your room is the same,
Perhaps you are changed by the place from which you came.

So when the world troubles, when noise fills the air,
I open a book, and another place is right there.
Not running from life, but returning anew,
With a quieter mind and a wider life view.