Occasionally I share poetry here (either mine or from the public domain, dear copyright people.) I wrote quite a few poems at one point drawing on my vocation as a librarian, and here’s one. Hopefully, by next week my schedule will have cleared appropriately for prose.
Deering Library
Entering the cathedral
thru well-lit catacombs
through silent halls, high stairs,
grinning gargoyles, stacked books, grey boxes, wooden carvings,
more echoes than words.
In a side chapel
a wine press guards the door
a round of keys admits the seeker.
Breaking the silence,
outside
on a cold and windswept lawn
the leaves blow on
the geese fly by.
Books become stone,
stone becomes music,
music becomes wine,
wine becomes words;
Time stops,
silence speaks,
bells ring,
doors open.
Touch it like a glass
and it will break.
Something in this place sings
without meaning to.
(Written in 1999; I understand they’ve redone the place since. Tempis fugit. God bless Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar on Flickr, who took a creative commons picture of the outside I could use with this blog post. To see the inside today, go here for some shots under copyright by Northwestern.)
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