class sixteen

Bookstore


Sitting in a window sill, I’m
nudged between the shelves and sky as
all my senses come to life in
quiet calm of afternoon. To
the left are lives of trees that
once stood whole as city-scapes, but

now are pressed into the mold of
lumbered floor and wood-grained ceiling.
The shelves have used tree souls as
well, and every page of all the
books can tell the tale of forest
greens and oceaned sky. And if they

were to glance outside, they’d see it
as they may have once: the yawning
blue as deep as infant’s eyes that
have not yet turned into brown. And
would these souls of dying trees have
known their brothers still outside? And

do they know now those who once did
stand beside them in the wood? It
seems that windows always know the
world that they have once been in and
now must stand and guard the way to;
this one, too, is much the same and

seems to grasp the outside world as
framed forever as a painting
of a scene in constant motion. The
paint now rots as bark on trees that
fell in epic downward crash, the
glass that once knew sand and storms has

now become a smudged and faded
portal to transport the wanting
into places never seen, as
now it takes me toward the realm of
quiet wood and shattered waves that
break upon my wandering thoughts.