Come Hither the Vintage Librarian

Come Hither the Vintage Librarian…

live @ the public library

Theses red bricks came long before digital plastic boxes                      
 books of all we are now… beclouded         
               with the dust in the wind from roots we once came.    
well-seasoned keyboards shine                   
                      aneath the wooden book shelves
         "Splendour in the Grass "

Sound clouds hover over sleeping dog eared pages lie in stillness wait
like an unenlightened haze,                      
    most see through the alluring nostalgic aroma
         newspapers old news...unfold breaking silence;   
              yet I hear this pulsing heartbeat drip the yearning ink
     and feel the corner of eyes upon this presence

The vintage librarian grimaces as sounds meander adrift,                  

remembering the silent days of yore,        
                                 of this handmade scribbled ink, transcribed from outside the box  
                                she’s curious of this one who writes in cursive firstly and not type

        "nearly a lost art (!)" she coquettishly whispers...

                  was she just flirting (?)              ... I dream t                
                           the fragrant scent of a woman's poetic mien swirls,                
                              manifesting awkward moments of thirsting reality,                      

yet still remaining outside the allure          
           of the digital box...                                              

         ...  now stepping back over the threshold                      
          with a keyboard click beyond the edge                
             within it, I find a get out of jail free card,                
   a digital library registration card,                  
   my hand tightly sworn atop a poetry book      
                        and now access to Al Gore's coveted claim of invention        
typed in Shawshank Redemption                  

and hit enter another world        

          Andy Dufresne crawled away from obtuse into the fresh air's light via the library 
With a rock hammer shielded by the Bible,                                             
adorning behemoth singularity... he was freed                                          
                                        
   I just came to the library to be with poetic words, if only for a moment,       
   yet liberating breaths...

Harlon Rivers

7.24.2013

Postscript:   Andy Dufresne was the main character in the classic movie, 

Shawshank Redemption.

His clandestine efforts brought a controversial library into Shawshank correctional facility...  

This thought was just written in a public library and meant to be nothing more than thinking out loud reminding myself of needed groundedness, humility…. by picking up 

nearly extinct books to touch the paper pages and feel the words touch

before hard bound books and libraries disappear like an unprotected endangered species…

Look what I found (!)

536. Ode ...INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY

FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
by William Wordsworth …1770-1850

…from stanza           X.                        
                    
Though nothing can bring back the hour
          Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
              We will grieve not, rather find
                  Strength in what remains behind;