Public Library

[BobBradshaw]

Public Library


They're like passengers waiting
all night for the next flight

at SFO, slumped deep
in chairs with books and magazines.

Why aren't they home reading?
Why pile up here with their coats

and rucksacks?
Do they live in tiny rooms

that smell of urine and bleach?
Is that why this well-lit room

is as attractive as a resort?
One man reads the biography

of Errol Flynn, but he is too shy
to look up when I say hello.

As I settle into a chair across from him
he squirms,

abandons his seat to meander
the aisles--but warily

as if the books from the top shelves
could fall on him like thieves.

Is this how I will spend
my last days, languishing

in an island of chairs, attentive
to the songs of Keats

but with no one to share
his genius with? Will I become

a recluse, one more bird
hidden in the branches?

[Bernie01]

They're like passengers waiting
all night for the next flight

I like this solid, declarative opening. it gives me a place in space and time, something upon which a poem may be constructed....

at SFO, slumped deep
in chairs with books and magazines.

Why aren't they home reading?
Why pile up here with their coats


good to cut now from the general to the personal.


and rucksacks?
Do they live in tiny rooms


that smell of urine and bleach?
Is that why this well-lit room


is as attractive as a resort?
One man reads the biography

of Errol Flynn, but he is too shy
to look up when I say hello.

good upcoming lines that hint at a developing plot.

As I settle into a chair across from him
he squirms,

abandons his seat to meander
the aisles--but warily



i like the continuing logic here, the visual play is vivid:

as if the books from the top shelves
could fall on him like thieves.

Is this how I will spend
my last days, languishing

in an island of chairs, attentive
to the songs of Keats

but with no one to share
his genius with? Will I become



and now, a forceful wrap in matched character to the overall poem.


a recluse, one more bird
hidden in the branches?


great job, a new and creative take.


bernie

[Kenneth2816]

Nailed it Bob.Public libraries are weird places

[Michael (MV)]

 
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/there-i ... ke-a-book/


Hi Bob,


I never was because I wasn't created to be a take-me-out-to-the-ballgame boy-man.

Drop me off at the library - then now forevermore - David Heathcliff Poe Hamlet - my top-shelf role models

not homeless there - At Home - and never alone - reading, listening & viewing are actually communal - being on the same page with.


I could go on, but I must soon leave the library for my practical abode - to wash to eat to sleep  


Workshop-wise:

1/ As I settle into a chair
across from him, he squirms,


2/ in an island of chairs, attuned
to the unheard melodies of Keats


3/ hidden in the leaves?


Bob, Thanks for this poem

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”   -- Jorge Luis Borges

^^ could be an epigraph for your poem



Michael (MV)

 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

[BobBradshaw]

Bernie, Kenneth, Michael -- many thanks!