Bookshelf

This is the last move I make, I do trust,
for books are as weighty as water or wine
— no fun under sun hauled up
in banana boxes.

I tried to weed them out:
The baby books are gone,
given to the children
now they are flown.

Here is a list of books I am not tied to:
Gardening, cooking, bread and self-sufficiency,
wild plants, trees, birds, flowers, all well stained;
perhaps I'll keep the one on mushrooms but maybe not.

For it's all on apps now, and who reads maps now?
The Book of Hints and Wrinkles has become the internet.
I'll keep the Peanuts, and the Garfields for a laugh
plus the Van Gogh picture books, heavy as they are.

Yet the poetry section continues to swell
— so quick and easy to pick up and read
[apart from the likes of Ashbery and G. Stein]
— all those gaps between lines — those clean, empty spaces...

But in the flattened vault of photographs and scraps below,
where dwells a cruel yellowed cache of memories,
with silverfish and sellotape, brittle with decay,
untended albums need attention, but can wait.

Clive Donovan

If you have any thoughts about this poem, Clive Donovan  would be pleased to hear them