Go inside and savor

My youngest has hatched a plan to buy the “red library” (one of our three local branches) for us to live in one day.

Here’s our future home:

Since we always call it “the red library,” I don’t think she’s ever even heard its full “official” name: “Your Home Public Library.” It should provide us with spacious (if ancient) digs if the name ever proves to be prophetic!

I’m not sure what her attraction to the library includes. I know that she’s been sent into ecstasies by the thought of riding her bike in the parking lot, so it’s not ALL about the books. But surely they are a part of it — especially the feeling of extravagance that accompanies our weekly library trips. The pinched world of “choose just one” or “can we afford it?” has no relevance here. As Valerie Worth says so beautifully, libraries have a magic all their own:

library

No need even
To take out
A book: only
Go inside
And savor
The heady
Dry breath of
Ink and paper,
Or stand and
Listen to the
Silent twitter
Of a billion
Tiny busy
Black words.

From All the Small Poems and Fourteen More (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994)