POEMS

Breathing in the dust of piled-high books:
Recalling the sharpening scent of library shelves
Long, free, focused nights of digging through ideas
In basement carrels, back in graduate school.

Books pile high now: some old friends
Too long ignored. Some, still unopened,
Their covers a reproach
Jumbles of familiar words, waiting to be sorted
Mountains of names, around my huddled chair:

Annie
Dillard: Teaching a
Stone to Talk; The Collected Works of
Teresa of Avila. Lucille
Clifton:
The Terrible Stories.
Candles in
Babylon, by Denise
And all these
Theology-words: Listening Hearts
Servanthood, Courageous
Incarnation, Pilgrimage,
Women in Praise of
The Sacred.
Piled below the Blue Cross
Blue Shield Directory of
Preferred Providers.

Sticking out of one pile,
A calico covered notebook
Tiny red, blue, yellow flowers on black
Glued for a Mother’s Day
By wise young hands.
The title scrawled in thick red marker:
Mom’s Notes.
Its pages
Empty.
(From Waving Back )