What a Library Can Be | Anne Marie Wells Poetry
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What a Library Can Be
We gather in this place we call a library
but some don’t realize it is also a pool
to dive into new works, dive into new words
that make our new worlds make sense, help us
make change in our communities, make change
in our souls. We have built this church
with our prayers and ideas, with the problems
we’ve overcome, our joy and our grief, our fear
and our love. We’ve laid it all here in these pages,
in these tomes. Within each book is also a home.
Some we visit, some we live in, each one holds
a vision for the person who wrote it
and another for the person who reads it,
yet another for the person who needs it.
We come to this school to learn the art
of alchemy, transforming pain into destiny,
anxiety into harmony. And when the words sought
cannot be caught in the leaves bound
on the shelves, this museum will help
us delve into ourselves to curate
the collection of our own reflection
’til we’re discharged from this hospital
holding in our palms the psalms that healed us. Patients
become doctors letting others feel them, letting others
heal from them. We gather in this place
we call a library, but some don’t realize
just what a library can be.
This poem first appeared in the anthology, Poems in Praise of Libraries edited by Hiram Sims & Karo Ska, for the grand opening of the Sims Library of Poetry in 2021.
To submit to Sims Library’s Poem-a-Week, click here.
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