Beginning At The Bottom

the bottom of the backwoods . . .
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, describing my home county in the 1950s

My small-town backwater library,
behind the bank,
across from the post office,
floats to the surface of right now,

daylight drifting through window
shades onto the wooden floor,
golden light, let’s call it,
because to say sepia places

it into a scrapbook, and this story
still lives inside the folds
of my mind’s aging labyrinth,
its infinite pages bound

fast in their signatures,
spines named and numbered,
its nooks where I hid myself,
lifting a book to my nostrils,

as if I could sniff out
a good story, just like my grandfather’s
bird-dogs flushed quail
from the underbrush. Sometimes

I heard whispers rise
from a neighboring bookshelf,
a telephone ringing, the bookmobile
laboring home from the backwoods

and always the light bulbs
in every lamp humming like bees
round a sweet pool of soda spilled
onto the pavement.

To that hive of bookshelves,
I journey again,
letting go of my one life
to enter the stories of others,

still hungry for words
and the way they can bring me back
home to my senses,
the way they reach out to the world.