BIBLIOPHILE’S KUDOS


Colorful, balanced upright, and proud

They stand in irregular rows

These legends bound, tapestries

Of solitary labors, each

Imprinted page a reference

To complex inner perceptions,

The slanted eye of other

Ways to see, puzzles locked

Piece by piece, card house

Of sentence, metaphor, and verb

The Artist, the Craftsmen works

Sweats and smokes, word by word

They toil until the soup of

Tepid prose begins to heat

Then, rewritten again and again

Rolls, bubbles and boils — a pinch

Of mystery spice? Perhaps some paprika

Of passion? Keyboard stirred by hand,

Space, tab, shift, return, again, again

Until, after roaring press

And rolling pulp we hold

The to be treasured or forgotten

Tome, from head to hand,

From hand to heart, our eyes

Behold this blessed passport to

Other lives, times, hearts, lands

In vision made, in vision read

That wonder, Books, fills my head.

- Richard Arthur Love