Re: OT: For book lovers

Joan E. wrote:
While cataloging a children's book, I ran across these great poems
(probably violating some copyright law here):

Great, Good, Bad

A great book is a homing device
For navigating paradise.

A good book somehow makes you care
About the comfort of a chair.

A bad book owes to many trees
A forest of apologies.


And this acrostic one (for those unfamiliar with acrostics, the first
letters also spell a word down):

Necessary Gardens

Libraries
Are
Necessary
Gardens,
Unsurpassed
At
Growing
Excitement

From: "Please bury me in the library", by J. Patrick Lewis, c2005
Joan

That was cute. Here is a poem I saw on the jcls.org website - under
the "more information" link. All items are due on our last open day,
April 6.

The Closing of the LIbrary (poem)

One by one they fall silent
Hamlet in mid-question: To be, or
Molly Bloom before she says Yes
And the author, met by chance, who would have
Spoken the missing words, and changed a child's life

One by one they drop into the dark
The drawings of Michelangelo
Ansel Adams' pages of captured light
Albums of the most antique rockets
And the most modern dinosaurs, gone

This is a choice we make today, uncompelled
To spend our money on something else
Instead of books, or the public good
We choose the private thing
The silent, and the dark

Then words return, and I remember:
"Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light"
Books have a loud and soundless speech
And light that comes from their light alone

So as each book is a written-out hope
For remembrance and mercy and understanding
And each library is a promise to the child and to the town
So I must believe that no book is forever closed
And that every library will, tomorrow, open

Pepper Trail
written in the Ashland Public Library
March 23, 2007

It is actually the Ashland branch of the Jackson County Library
Services, but people tend to forget that "their" library is a branch
of a larger system. Hopefully, our levy will pass in May and we'll
re-open soon. If not ? ? ? ? ?
Liz from Humbug

.