Bookshelf

by Sean O’Neill

These parti-colored tomes,
that rank themselves
by some haphazard logic
only chance can winkle out,
are each a brimming casket
like a capsule of a stealthy mind
that has disgorged its light.

Grave thoughts and senses die
between the shining covers
lying still, unchanging,
once the writer spilled
a soul among the leaves
and locked the meaning,
held forever like a stain.

Perhaps like printed words
we too will wander through
the pages of the world
extracting some significance
from periods and commas
that waylay our twisted path
and trammel our advance.

But then, perhaps our gist
is not as black and white
as we had fondly thought.
The author leaves to us
our subtle take, not trapped
between the covers of a life
but fluid, motile, worked upon.

We all are conjured up
and written plainly here,
but catch some deeper drift
in grammars of the heart.
And when our epilogue appears
we’ll fly up like the birds to perch
on branches of our author’s mind.

---

Sean O'Neill was born in Scotland but has lived in the USA for the past 15 years. He has published 17 collections of poetry and is the author of five novels and four nonfiction books, including the bestselling How To Write a Poem: A Beginner's Guide. He runs the Kolbitars Poetry Group in Lansing, Michigan, USA.