words and sighs and silence, ink and whips

For a fifteen-year-old there was plenty 

to do: browse the magazines, 

slip into the Adult Section to see 

what vast tristesse was born of rush-hour traffic, 

décolletés, and the plague of too much money. 

There was so much to discover—how to 

lay out a road, the language of flowers, 

and the place of women in the tribe of Moost. 

There were equations elegant as a French twist, 

fractal geometry's unwinding maple leaf; 

 

I could follow, step-by-step, the slow disclosure 

of a pineapple Jell-O mold—or take 

the path of Harold's purple crayon through 

the bedroom window and onto a lavender 

spill of stars. Oh, I could walk any aisle 

and smell wisdom, put a hand out to touch 

the rough curve of bound leather, 

the harsh parchment of dreams. 

 

As for the improbable librarian 

with her salt and paprika upsweep, 

her British accent and sweater clip 

(mom of a kid I knew from school)—

I'd go up to her desk and ask for help 

on bareback rodeo or binary codes,
phonics, Gestalt theory,
lead poisoning in the Late Roman Empire,
the play of light in Dutch Renaissance painting;
I would claim to be researching
pre-Columbian pottery or Chinese foot-binding,
but all I wanted to know was:
Tell me what you've read that keeps
that half smile afloat
above the collar of your impeccable blouse.

 
So I read Gone with the Wind because
it was big, and haiku because they were small.
I studied history for its rhapsody of dates,
lingered over Cubist art for the way
it showed all sides of a guitar at once.
All the time in the world was there, and sometimes
all the world on a single page.
As much as I could hold
on my plastic card's imprint I took,
 

greedily: six books, six volumes of bliss,
the stuff we humans are made of:
words and sighs and silence,
ink and whips, Brahma and cosine,
corsets and poetry and blood sugar levels
I carried it home, five blocks of aluminum siding 

and past the old garage where, on its boarded-up doors,
someone had scrawled:

I CAN EAT AN ELEPHANT
IF I TAKE SMALL BITES.
 

Yes, I said to no one in particular: That's
what I'm gonna do!

 

[Rita Dove {1952- } 'Maple Valley Branch Library, 1967', from Books and Libraries, from Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets]