Books Should Be

“A book should be an axe to break the frozen sea within us.” – Kafka

Well, that's ambitious,
to think pack ice would yield
to a little chopping with a hatchet. Why not say:
a book should be the Gulf Stream
a book should be global warming
a book should be an icebreaker with bows of steel
wrapped in colored cardboard?

Or should a book be a pod of harbor seals
running silent under the ice of your soul
occasionally pausing to chew an inconspicuous breathing hole?
Or a bear, half-snow and half-aquatic
prowling the arctic-scape as if it owned the place?

A book might be a williwaw throwing clouds
of frozen snow the size of mountains into
a blue-ice sky the size of continents,
or the aurora, sunless rainbow reflected
in a thousand mirrors of shattered ice
or in a pool of fresh water on the surface of a frozen fjord.
A book could be a rowdy quarreling flock of arctic terns
coming home from three years at sea.

They came, sober-plumaged and gaudy
came to perch on every swaying branch
in the jungles of my heart. See me now
bringing you dropped feathers by the handful.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside