After a Few Pages I Understood No More Than When I Began Reading

Feeling neither purposeful nor decisive, I was reading letters written by 
Pliny the Younger about the eruption of Vesuvius and the covering of
Pompeii and Herculaneum

with thirty meters of hot rock. Although the earth was shaking Pliny said
I am not sure whether I should call it brave or foolish

but he called for a book and read it as if for pleasure, even continuing to
write out what he’d begun. But when a friend of his uncle

saw my mother and me sitting there, and me even reading, he rebuked my 
mother for putting up with me and me for my lack of concern. Nevertheless

I remained buried in my book. Pliny’s uncle, having hurried to the place the
others were fleeing, then went to bed and actually slept. But the courtyard
that his bedroom gave onto was now filling up with ashes mixed with pumice

so if he stayed in the bedroom any longer he would not be able to leave.
Awakened,

he discussed what was happening. Should he

remain indoors or wander in the open, for the building was rocking

with frequent and sever tremors and seemed to be swaying back and forth as if
shaken from its foundation

though when daylight came, his body was found, intact, uninjured, covered and
dressed just as he had been, more like someone asleep than dead

Originally appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review