Library

The soft mud plump buddha librarian,
too timid to send me a postcard
and an email following to remind me
that the books I have borrowed
need to wing back to their nest,
does not even call the number I registered;

see, there has been this pestilence,
and no one dares to ring
someone and hear he has fallen;
I know he will not visit my home
to see if I am alive and reading
those books again and again,
and if in some lazy afternoons, I see
the aged library in those crinkly
and rusting pages – that somnolent place,
and the window full of spring
by the rocker where I used to lull a book
into dream of a reader finding its deeper meaning.

-Kushal Poddar