Let the bookstore owner leave
a light.
The only light in the center
of the city.
Setting its timer to turn on
at sunrise.
A good hour to open
your eyes, turn
to the book left-open
on your nightstand.
Pick up where you left-
off. In the story.
In the poem.
In the book
you found,
in a bin
at the bottom
of the circular
stairs.
The day you found
yourself standing
next to the owner,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Who’s still living.
beyond his hundred years
on your bookshelf.
Who hand-wrote
in his New Directions
book Back Roads
to Far Places
“fish float through
the trees eating the seeds
of the sun.”
An image that’s lived
inside you
in hard and city-
lit times.
As well as the lines
on one of the numberless
pages “loneliness
sets its own lamp
alight.”
Which you tell me
is almost impossible
to feel holding
a small, black and white
book in your hands.
The sun swimming through
the pond. Its shadows
of printed branches.
________
Gary Margolis is Emeritus Executive Director of College Mental Health Services at Middlebury College. His third book, “Fire in the Orchard” was nominated for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize Poetry. His latest book “Time Inside” is recently published.
________
