Poem: September 11, 2023

A Discovery in the Library

We forget about the library
and its towering stacks--
the ordered labyrinth, the lines
that wrap around corners and
zag from top to bottom like
the path of an antique typewriter.

We forget we can travel from
Aristotle to Aristophanes, then
Herakles and Homer, Juno and Jove
and the collapse of whole civilizations
that lurched toward our own.
Ebbing and flowing. Exploding slow.

We forget we can get so lost in
the corners where no one has pulled
this history of textiles or that bible
of southern cuisine for maybe fifteen
years, but there they are, the voices
whose particular passions preceded us.

We forget there are treasures buried
in silt at the bottom of rivers of books.
We forget the lost cities sunk under
the weight of new cities, and thoughts
branched away from and returning to
themselves. We forget that libraries

remember.