EARTHBORNE ONLINE POETRY MAGAZINE
A DREAM OPENING
The grand opening of the Poetry Bookstore
was scheduled for one AM.
That is because scrutinizing poems
in midday light misses
what they are trying to tell us.
A crisp January night (My birthday perhaps?)
But bright too, with lightfrom enormously tall snow banks
cut straight, as by a giant snow blower
lining the road to the bookstore.
Inside was dark still when I arrived
so I stepped out on the snow-clad road
my footsteps muffled in white.
Silence.
As though a lady librarian cautioned
the slightest noise would bring the snow banks
crashing down, burying
me, and the poetry bookstore.
I smothered a cough, sensing
the future of poetry
was in my hands.
And with it, the hope of the people of earth
who need metaphor as badly as sunlight
who need beauty and color and
inexplicable things
like poetry bookstores open
only at night.
By Lois Read
