Bumblebee Books

My Grammy was my special hero who taught me a loving respect for books.
She said books teach us and widen our world,
they never give a fig about a reader’s looks, or if they new clothes.

When June came the yellow trucks would arrive
from the school-system for Grammy to repair.
For this was 1952, where a book had to survive.

We had glue pots with tongue-depressor tongues,
and tape and scissors and huge erasers, pink
and white for the ink marks dancing on the page.
Words and words and words, all to make you think.

Big bumblebees would swarm about the pots of glue,
touching their tongues to the white Elmer’s taste.
We trimmed and erased and I learned of far-off lands.
We were careful that our glue never went to waste.

Unwanted and unloved, treated with savage brutality,
this was a place of freedom and acceptance, a world
where little girls found hope and safety so she would
grow into a woman who sits with a book, legs curled.