1. The Book Lady
She travels with grace
through the caverns of books,
searching for the neglected,
the forgotten, the abandoned,
then slowly, sadly,
she pulls them off the shelves
and places them in the box of fate
destined now either for adoption
or a re-incarnation in some lesser form–
perhaps as paper bags or toilet paper–
what once had been thoughts and poems
and even magical words….
2. The Lonely Book
I took a book out of the library,
Where it had stood amongst
Its brethren for 25 years, unused,
unborrowed—I know this because
Its pages were crisp, never bent
By a greedy reader, and were yellow
From time’s effect, a drug that
Ages books as it does readers….
Someday I guess all books, both
The virgins and the overly used,
Even abused, will be no more: all
Replaced by sterile zeros & ones,
And my future self will never again
Have the soft pleasure of turning
Crisp pages and feeling tangible
The words of a stranger’s mind.
3. WHAT POETRY IS
What poetry is,
is magic
and words appear
and disappear
in profound meaning.
What magic is,
is God.
Freud and Moses
both agree,
God is magic
and magical
is our Creator.
He disappears
and then reappears
in meaning
deep as death.
What God is,
is creation–
it’s going on
everyday, everywhere.
Think about it.
Explain otherwise
fire and seed.
What creation is,
is poetry.
An infant wakes,
thousands perish,
a girl smiles,
wars rage,
a skyscraper grows.
All beings themselves
are poems:
bad poems or
beautiful ones,
poems of evil or
poems of holiness,
blank verse or
lyrical rhymes
but all creatures
live poetry.
What poetry is,
is magic
is creation
is God
is you
is I
is life
is death
is infinity,
and then some….