The Final Chapter

There was an old woman who lived in a book
taking comfort from the fact that,
without ever looking up, she could get through life
with very little effort and the minimum of strife

The world still turned and things got done
but mostly by others who would run the errands
and wash the pots while she spent her life reading
stories about Lancelot's wooing of King Arthur's wife

She read all day and then all through the night
with an insatiable appetite for the new or the techie
skimming the pages at incredible rate until a man
demanding payment came and switched off the lechie

But the woman continued with her endless quest
pursuing her need to digest as much as she could
about cottonwood or the Khyber Pass until a man
demanding payment came and switched off the gas

Continuing her trek along mahogany shelves with
fact finding delves into the early romantics, she'd
just reached page twelve of Pollyanna Porter, when a man
bandying semantics came and switched off the water

Without water or gas or reasonable light her plight
became much harder, as squinting by candle when
hungry and cold makes reading Lord Byron a sight to
behold, especially if you're old and there's no fire on

The old woman laboured as best she could, but with 
frozen fingers and furry tongue, reading Plato in Greek
was, so to speak, a rung too far for someone so weak
without water or heating or sustainable physique

She finally expired on page a hundred and three of the
adventures of Tintin by Georges Remi and was laid to rest 
with gracious eulogy in a shady corner of a nearby paddock 
alongside friends Tintin, Snowy and the great Captain Haddock

Audio: https://image2url.com/r2/default/audio/1770807329275-a2563dab-289d-425c-...

Image by Freepik