“Is there a more gentle way to go into the night
than to follow an endless rope of sentences and then to slip drowsily
under the surface of a page into the first tentative flicker of a dream?
All late readers know this sinking feeling of falling into
the liquid of sleep and then rising again to the call
of a voice that you are holding in your hands,
as if pulled from the sea back into a boat…
Is there is a better method of departure
by night than this quiet bon voyage
with an open book, the sole
companion who has come
to see you off, to wave
you into the dark
waters beyond
language?”
– Billy Collins, 
Reading Myself to Sleep