"Bookworm" by Tricia Knoll, Frequent Contributor

Bookworm

Tricia Knoll

At ten, I had a friend my parents liked.

She was grateful, modest, kind, and truthful.

We rode horses behind my father.

Sometimes we played dolls. My parents wanted

me to be smooth and blonde like her.

Her father restored rare books for that publishing company

in Chicago. He unglued and glued, and stitched and restitched,

the last gasp rescue-inhaler for rare worn books.  

He kept two white bookworms in a glass vial

with yellow flakes of papers with brown edges.

He smelled like our town library, the kids’ section

with the window seat over the ravine looking into the oaks

and the cement arch over the door. Where I found Jane Eyre

and Elizabeth Bennett and scooted aside Nancy Drew.

Climb into books to edge into a peddler’s wistful song,

see how a teacher changed one life, follow jailbreaks

or word-hoards shuffled into poetry. One summer

I practiced Trachtenberg speed mathematics

from a paperback checked out six times.

Some books speak in tongues of salt and sweet.

Show that cats can live inside the fur of dogs, that kingdoms divide

unequally, how bad men may become less bad or worse.

The girl with a scarlet A on her dress nursed a baby at her breast.

Between bindings, I mingle

with what time dries up,

glues loosen,

mingle with women I could be,

don’t have to be.

Poet’s Notes: I visit our local library at least twice a week. It doesn't have the oak and dust smell I associate with libraries of my childhood but it has librarians who are kind and helpful. I recently heard Nigerian drummers there on a Saturday afternoon!