Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
—Jane Smiley

•••

Call it insecurity, an unwillingness
to part with old friends—though
I have, lots of them.

Still, so many remain bookshelved
throughout the house, stacked in spots,
too. Some exist only in book form—

poetry mostly—or classics that I held
in much younger hands. I know we have
to part, old friends,

I think as I put handfuls into boxes bound
for the library resale shop. Thank you,
I whisper. I hope that fresh hands

will open and new eyes adore you,
as I have. I’ve already bequeathed most
of the Shakespeare

to an English teacher friend, but the
P.G. Wodehouse—some first editions—
I still pull off the shelf

now and again, chucking at Bertie
Wooster’s silliness as Jeeves swoops in
to rescue his employer

again and again. It’s the “again”
that means that I will likely die with
a goodly number of these books

hugging these shelves—the ones he
built in my office when we moved into
this house, some of them

bowed with age and weight. But oh,
the worlds they hold, the language
of long-dead writers

singing from these pages,
a familiar choir softly humming
keeping me company as I type—

may it never stop.