Member-only story
My Bookshelves, my Life
a poem of precious things
Books shoved upon my open metal shelves
In gracious disarray, half-ordered pride,
From garden wisdom to long tales of elves
And men. Here lays of long ago collide
With knitter’s charts and histories of Spain,
While dictionary takes its half a foot
Of space laid crosswise and against the grain,
Its pages outward and the contest moot
Between red Webster’s and the OED
“Concise” and used, the spoils of a sale
And watchful eye, delighted, quick to see
The treasure for five dollars, secret grail
Of my collection. On the top a bowl
Of antique painted violets commands
A stack of brightly pictured books, a whole
Array of brilliant rooms from far-off lands.
I think of all the worlds and knowledge mine,
Bright spine against bright spine, from roses’ care,
Equations for ceramic glaze design,
To bitter histories we scarcely dare
Remember and must yet more surely not
Forget. How strange to think that all these things
Are simply printed, ink on paper, bought
From libraries for pennies for the wings
They bring us (riding through the dangerous night
With d’Artagnan or slaying Grendel’s dam
Beneath the sea or simply digging bright
Egyptian treasures; how to knit a tam
Stacked just above whole histories of rhymes.)
Within their pages half my memories
Reside: escape from pain through distant times
As much as through courageous certainties
Of those who’ve faced down horror and…
