Wandering through the books piled high,

the lustful eye of sentence coming over me and the rigid

spines of non conformity, shrouded in sizes ranging from the obese

and the thin streaks of nothing,

to the over familiar that I catch glancing my way,

eye-less

but still able to wink at me in complete recognition of a fond

couple of days spent in bed together, peace in our time,

as well as in my head,

to the unobtainable, the ones that prize themselves too lofty

to be anything but out of reach, their beloved verdict

that they believe I am not worthy to run my finger through

their silk-woven opaque closed rank silhouette,

that like some of the women I have met, their noses

turned up at the thought of spending time

in the hands of the meagre man and yet the paperbacks,

the ones who fell open into my loving arms and allowed the caress

of genuine care and admiration, never did anything

but smile and love me back;

all of this I saw as I wandered through the books.

 

Some of these books would periodically offer me a refuge,

a bolt hole, the ultimate safety net of expression

in which fear, love, humour and the joy of thought

would be entertained in what was once the Dining Room,

a place where food should be devoured

and glasses raised with Scottish libation to the dawning of a new ideal

crushed in defeat by the same old, same old.

 

The Dining Room being told to masquerade as a library,

when in actual fact the library is observing its rightful

place in my life as a sanctuary.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015