MY DEAR JIM, LIBRARIAN

Written for my dear friend, Jim.  For 25 years we walked our neighborhood at 6 a.m. and talked about many things important and trivial.  He told me about the things he loved and those that angered him.  Twenty-five years of talks is a long time.  I have moved away and I miss those walks.

I am Volume G of Britannica

In a carton on the floor,

Storage closet 83,

Made archaic

By the internet,

But I remember sunlight

While on a shelf, my friend Jim

Picking me up, always

Thumbing through my pages

With tender, inquisitive fingers.

Our first time,

He looked up gooseberries

For a lady wearing a flowered hat.

His loving, but nervous touch

Betrayed his anxiousness to find

The answer to her inquiry.

One night he was alone

As he opened me and searched

For Gettysburg.  He spent

So much time with me;

I could tell he loved

Reading about the Civil War.

Then, there was the afternoon

He became angry with a librarian

Who stayed behind the desk and sent

A student alone in my direction.

He lectured her: take the patron

To the section, select the correct volume

And show them the page.

I felt goose bumps.

He would have stayed into old age,

Had he not also been caught in a techno-web.

He retired before his touch was cold.

Me, I am heading for a funeral pyre,

But I know Jim loved me

And I adored him

And his insatiable search

For answers.