A Room Full of Books

I am in the center
of a circumference of books,
and it occurs to me that
in all my living spaces I have
evolved a room such as this.

Like a literary brick layer,
book by book, shelf by shelf,
a small city of manuscripts grows.
They are life-long denizens,
ever-present, standing ingloriously

like straight-stemmed
multicolored Easter lilies
with silent trumpet mouths
waiting to be opened, to teach,
to comfort, to be re-read after

their long involuntary rest.
I dust and lovingly polish their spines.
I rearrange them in my personal hierarchies.
I lionize their centrality in my life
and acknowledge

that nothing electronic
can ever replace
the invitation to come in
when I stand in the doorway
of my room full of books.