Knowledge Neighbors

You and I, my friend, we lend what we have to each other,
Handsaws and tree pruners, cars sometimes, and sugar.
But we lend as well to each other what we know – The Library,
It tends our voices – it speaks for us in words as many as stars,
All to make sense of the world and the worlds we share.
The new century is its newest book, and this book is our lives.
It is our own chance to be new, to be surprised, to see what it is
We are all going to do. Today, we lend ourselves to each other,
Our big hands to the small hands of the mighty race of children,
Our big words to their small syllables, our ideas awaiting theirs.
This book of ours together has no ending written for it yet.
Its stories have unfamiliar faces, but not unfamiliar hopes.
It is a book of many colors with a binding stitched from dream.
When we enter a library, we open the first page of imagination,
The last page of memory, and the webpage of today.
Tomorrow’s page has not yet been printed, and may not be –
Perhaps it will be made of flying things, pages that come to us
Like bird wings through the air. This page might be anything.
However it makes itself, however we read, or hear, or taste it,
Let us think that it will be good, because we were good.