book sale

I have always loved the smell of books. A scent often scolded for it's lack of perfumed elegance. It is one that brings me a great deal of comfort. It is the smell that sings me to sleep, that asks me about my deepest wanderings, and that has been there through all my days of learning.

Today I breathed it in as I walked down rows of literature for sale. Half off a dollar fifty hardly seemed to do the masterpieces justice. Don't get me wrong, dear friends, I always try my luck at any local used book sale I hear of but today, well, today was different. I saw a sort of injustice as I walked the tattered carpeted floors to the "fiction" section. I saw Genocide, a slaughter of pages. I heard their screams as I browsed over unfamiliar titles and still others only too familiar.
I looked around and saw that I was the only person under the age of 60 in the room. These veterans of book clubs understood the desperation of this unruly situation. I stopped suddenly feeling like a 5 year-old puppy obsessed little girl in the middle of a dog pound. I wanted to save them all, to guarantee each of them that
"Yes, you shall be read again someday! Yes, you will sing another to sleep. Yes, you will teach a college student about the absurdities of the Vietnam war. Yes, you will encourage a young boy to be the captain of a fishing boat. Yes, you will give solace to the depressed. Yes, you will ignite the fires of love between two awe-struck teens."
These are the dreams of books. I stood there in the middle of the hopelessness that was this situation and suddenly understood. We are all books, you and I. We sit waiting, content to be read when the time is right. Content to wait for the perfect reader. One who understands the beloved content they are beholding. While others still have prettier covers. They have many readers. they open themselves up to anyone's eyes. They long for the adoration. Yet still others that shall never be read except by the one who they themselves created the inhabitants. Yet isn't the story all about they author anyway. I shall live my life living to please my author and not my beholder whoever they might be.
I hand 3 dollars to the cashier as I take my treasures. My head dizzy from the sweet elation of aromas and adventurous thoughts. Tonight I will drink deep of these weathered pages. yes, I will always love the smell of books.

I am in love with Billy Collins!!
I am at a point where every word I write feels wasted. So, as to not disappoint the very few who take the time to read my humble blog, I will try to entertain you as best I can. I wouldn't want your click of the mouse hinting in my direction to be all for not. Enjoy the pure genius that is Billy Collins, and maybe (hopefully) next time you decide to visit this rather dull and poor impression of me, you might find something that is actually written from me. It is hard to tell from where I stand, it seems an utter impossibility (as most blocks writers stumble upon do).
Enjoy!

splitting wood

by Billy Collins

Frost covered this decades ago,
and frost will cover it again tonight,
the leafy disarray of this woodland

now thinned down to half its trees,
but this morning I stand here
sweating in a thin shirt

as I split a stack of ash logs
into firewood
with two wedges, an ax, and a blue-headed maul.

The pleasures here are well known:
the feet planted wide,
the silent unstoppable flow of the downswing,

the coordination that is called hand-eye,
because the hand achieves
whatever the concupiscent eye desires

when it longs for a certain spot,
which, in this case, is the slightest fissure
visible at one end of the log

where the thin, insinuating edge
of the blade can gain entry,
where the shape of its will can be done.

I want to say there is nothing
like the sudden opening of wood,
but it is like so many other things—

the stroke of the ax like lightning,
the bisection so perfect
the halves fall away from each other

as in a mirror,
and hit the soft ground
like twins shot through the heart.

And rarely, if the wood
accepts the blade without conditions,
the two pieces keep their balance

in spite of the blow,
remain stunned on the block
as if they cannot believe their division,

their sudden separateness.
Still upright, still together,
they wobble slightly

as two lovers, once secretly bound,
might stand revealed,
more naked than ever,

the darkness inside the tree they shared
now instantly exposed to the blunt
light of this clear November day,

all the inner twisting of the grain
that held them blindly
in their augmentation and contortion

now rushed into this brightness
as if by a shutter
that, once opened, can never be closed.

this is my favorite poem!!!