The Library's Book
There are unbearable things to bear,
There is a place I dare not speak of
And we have all been there.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
The Name of the Place
The Shadow-Makers, 1969
It wasn’t meant to be mine, yet
Each word belonged to me.
The poet, her desires and regrets,
A sweetness that painfully bleeds
Into my veins, into my thoughts,
A long-awaited transfusion--
A blue flame soothing a blue moth
That named the stranger I’ve become.
I must return what is not mine,
Though each line has burrowed deep,
And the echoes of her grieving pines
Will not let me sleep, how can I sleep?
Back it must go to sulk on a shelf.
Returned: one thin book. Found: myself.
Copyright © Cyndi Macmillan | Year Posted 2023
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