The obsoletion of libraries
dangles ominously like
one big ice stalactite
just above his head.
He needs books, the real ones,
soft paper to clutch
between his fingers as he
searches for the right answers
to all the questions he
can't find,
the how-have-you-beens,
where-are-you-goings
and sometimes
what-is-your-name.
He can't keep track of the time
but he can categorize catechols and bird calls
and remember to be worried about
a greying Earth
and cling to its pole
letting it spin him round and round
until he gets too dizzy to distinguish
the letters from reality.
And he reads the fantasy novels alongside the
news, it
is all too entertaining to peer down
from his box seat
on the fear dripping from the ceiling
onto the audience.
Neither is scary to him -
fiction nor nonfiction,
not on their own, anyway -
but his blood pressure begins to rise
as he raises his eyes
to the stage
and watches them
obliterate one another.
And there he decides,
if libraries will die,
he will bear their sentence
he will fold himself into every page
and melt in between the lines of ink
and they will settle into dust
together.