Poetry Friday: Don't Go Into the Library

I'm not sure what got me started on the library love this week, except for the fact that I'm never far from library love. I grew up going to the library with my mother, my sister, and my brother, I went to the library as a young adult. When I became a mother, I took my babies/toddlers/children/teens to the library. One of my daughters is a librarian, and I still, naturally, of course, obviously, go to the library. 

"The library is the book of books," Alberto Ríos says. The library is my enormous, never-to-be-completely-conquered-but-that's-okay TBR list. 

And I must share this Lit Hub must-read: "How a Year Without My Library Has Changed Me":

“I go to libraries because they are the Ocean,” wrote Susan Howe, who compared her experience of libraries to Thoreau’s woods—wild, ripe for exploration. 

Don’t Go Into the Library

by Alberto Ríos 

The library is dangerous—

Don’t go in. If you do

You know what will happen.

It’s like a pet store or a bakery—

Every single time you’ll come out of there

Holding something in your arms.

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

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 The Poetry Friday roundup this week is at Susan's Bruck's place, Soul Blossom Living. 

(Image by TuendeBede from Pixabay)

Poetry Friday: The Daylight Savings Time Blues

If I weren't sleep-deprived (courtesy of everyone's favorite time of year) I would have composed an original poem and called it "The Daylight Savings Time Blues." Maybe I'll be capable of doing that next week. Maybe. 

In the meantime, someone else's ode to sleep will have to do. Thank you, Frank Mitalsky. 

Sleep

by Frank Mitalsky 

The thing that I would keep and keep 

 The dearest thing to me, is sleep. 

 Sleep that comes like waving wheat, 

 And bounds away on rabbit-feet. 

 Sleep fragrant as an angel's breath, 

That swings so near, so far, from death.

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Lovely Linda at TeacherDance has the Poetry Friday round up today. 

(Photo courtesy of Jay Mantri at Pixabay.) 

Poetry Friday: William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

Atticus suggested this one last week but I was in a Billy Collins mood. (Honestly, though, when am I not in a Billy Collins mood?) This week, though, felt like a spring-and-all week, with its combination of blue and cloudy skies, chilly winds, a March thaw, and the promise of quickening. 

Spring and All (By the road to the contagious hospital) 

by William Carlos Williams 

I

By the road to the contagious hospital

under the surge of the blue

mottled clouds driven from the

northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the

waste of broad, muddy fields

brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water

the scattering of tall trees

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.) 

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Kathryn Apel has the roundup this week. 

Be sure to congratulate her on her latest picture book, The Bird in the Herd!