Night Librarian

 

 

Too scary to be beautiful?–powder-blue sometimes,

ashen the ghosts now. Always one

obsessed with the cartography

of Indiana. Fade they do into the stacks

when I approach, will not be spoken

to. Why do they return? All this

silent research, maps, verse.

Someone (me?) to search for something? Bones?

Jewelry? Lost words? A mouse runs across

the carpeting. We at least share a brotherhood

of breath, saliva and blood. (Its scared

black pinheads of eyes.) But the ghosts

go on reading, loveless, silent, alone

even in the company of what they desire.