Bookish

by Lynn D. Gilbert

The other day I bought 
a well-worn book, a library discard,
and inside found my old friends,
a date-due slip and typed pocket, 
and in the pocket a charge card,
all of them decades obsolete — 
as gone as the carrier pigeon.

Cards, pockets, slips — all now vanished 
like the golden oak catalogue drawers
with two-foot rods through holes in every card.
Woe to the worker who removed a rod
and then dropped the whole drawerful!

I learned to love books bodily,
from taping tears in kids’ books, 
stamping dates due, pushing returns 
around on book trucks and then
shelving them in catalogue order, 
the numerology of Dewey Decimal 
or Library of Congress.

I love their heft, their slide, 
the smell of old paper, faintly sulphuric;
the crackle of binding; the swish
of pages moving freely
through my fingers; and thoughts
that land as softly as a child 
high up on a playground swing 
who bails out onto fragrant bark mulch
delighted with their adventure.

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Lynn D. Gilbert's poems, twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes, have appeared in such journals as After Happy Hour Review, Arboreal, Blue Unicorn, carte blanche, The MacGuffin, Ponder Review, and Sheepshead Review. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in an Austin suburb and reviews poetry submissions for Third Wednesday Journal.

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