THE REFERENCE LIBRARIAN OF ARCANE GRIEFS
by Howie Good
Who knows when
she went down
to the evening dimness
of the stacks,
but now she stands
with her flabby back to us,
slowly turning the pages
of a long treatise
on melancholy
and quietly weeping.
Anyone would think
it was she herself
who misshelved
the books we needed.
What about the burning curtains?
I want to ask her. And what
about the parking lot filled
with abandoned babies?
She doesn't look up,
but if she did,
she might see planes
like silver crucifixes
and a few tiny gray clouds
scattered like the debris
of some distant confusion.