now sleepy in the library resting toes on
the jelly-basalt windows punctuating
the public parts of the building, old tourists naive
in the eyes like turtles stretching
necks out to the exhibits - butterflies
and dragonflies and stick insects,
dried out dusty bright pinned onto
something white I'm reminded of
slick bronze ladies pinned to the
covers of women's magazines -
but I move on to the guts
of he place a bundle of books
is bound up and waiting for me
easy to forget the concrete bunkers
books come from, I imagine camphor
yellow light and exposed wiring and
long converging rows of steelrimmed
books, proving we are a repository for something
worthwhile, something worth protecting.