Thursday, April 3, 2014

April Celebrations - and Remembrances



April is the time for some of our favorite occasions – National Library Week, National Volunteer Week and National Poetry Month.  To celebrate all three at once, we offer the following poem, which was composed by Ann Jepson, Ridgefield Library friend and Friend extraordinaire who passed away last week.

Elegy on the Obsolescence of Libraries

This morning
I was reminded of that smartest
and most social of farm animals,
the pig --
how in the days of the family farm
a little before feeding time
they would line up at the trough
in anticipation of the feast to come,
boars, sows, piglets
all waiting for the gate to open
and the morsels to flow,
rinds, peels, breakfast’s wake-up grounds,
noon’s lunch, last night’s dinner,
a sleepless night’s snack, celebration’s sweets,
all the rewards of man’s abundant repasts.

So when I went to the library
ten minutes before opening time
and saw that smartest and most social of the primates,
the human --
man, woman, child
waiting in anticipation for the doors to open
to peruse or check out
cd’s, dvd’s biographies, memoirs, fiction,
nonfiction, poetry, newspapers, magazines,
travel books, computer programs,
all the rewards of the race’s reveries,

I thought - Naysayers,
we will be here,
waiting at the trough,
for some time to come.

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