The Inheritance

If you could own a book
One you always wanted
To consume or cherish,
I wonder which that might be.

I have seen my Robert Frost with a different type of Frosting.
And yes, My Hemingway, I have seen it too.
The title barely legible thru the grey misty mildew,
A malicious mix of moldy muck.
For Whom the Bell Tolls forever rings true.

There is a new and more enthusiastic student who has taken up the book.
The ultimate last reader of all great books,
He consumes it all without a look.
Every word on every page, he loves.
Mr. Silverfish does.

So many authors
So many choices!
So many Venues,
Who would you choose?

I wish my old friend’s Uncle was still amongst the living,
He would enlighten us so!
This intellectual of whom I have never met as a human soul.
A friendship I would of cherished unquestionably so.

We would together explore his collection.
Reminiscing upon how this or that became to be,
Or not to be.
His tastefully talented mind is now a reflection.

Painfully obvious his life’s work interrupted.
Halted as if in mid step,
The threshold moved.
Such as all human kinds unfinished business
Does remain as remains.

His trash would have been my treasures.
His treasures are now my trash.

A thousand books galore!
Interpretations of literature, Poetry, Sonnets, and more.
Philosophy, science, religion, in first editions are all here.
Undignified piles of original Stories by the score.

Twain, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Wilde.
All here amongst the wild and morbid condition.
As if the same in spirit as their author’s own mortal bodies.
Their works are no better a rendition.

Do books have a soul?
I think they do, and why not?

They live on and on beyond their original spark of creation.
Manifested over and over
By new mortals who religiously
Cherish them So much more in their afterlife,
So much larger than they once were,
With the same enthusiasm as their mortal counterparts anticipation.

Stashed away inside are Sheet Music for concerto, both piano and violin.
Their artful sound did once resound thru home and forest wood.
Organized in heaps of mold and vermin droppings in their bin.
So boring to the beastly beetles that beat on every note.
They would have eaten the instruments too, if they could.

There is no melody to their mad taste for music.
A forgotten masterpiece soon becomes truly forgotten.

Barrister cabinets, Elizabethan furniture and roll top desks
Now all await their turn to the dumpster.
The quiver of a pen, the aroma of ink will no more fit the bill.
Wood borers and termites have wetted
Their taste for exquisite antiques and have consumed their fill.
They have left behind a different type of collectible.

If only the living had the same passion for possessions
As these earthly bottom dwellers do.
Now they are well educated and deserve their degree.
Too busy in their daily lives to see the mayhem an afterlife brings.

Do any of us have a clue?