a space not crowded

On weekends I'd drive an hour
to her school to study with her there
in the library, a cold concrete place,
ten stories high, with dull
gray carpets and thin metal shelves.
We'd find a space not crowded,
spread out our papers and books,
work in silence doing calculus
and embryology, genetics, physics
and organic chemistry.
But sometimes I'd bring Byron
and Browning, Tennyson
and the songs of the Troubadours,
whisper their lines across the table
at her, turning the ugly windowless
concrete tomb of a room
into a pine forest with butterflies
and a softly murmuring brook,
yellow, blue and red flowers
covering its banks, beckoning.

Michael Estabrook

With all the time he spent in Harvard's Widener Library and the Rutgers Alexander Library and Princeton's Firestone Library, Michael Estabrook(mestabrook@comcast.net) could easily qualify as a book rather than a person.