Poem: “Knowledge Neighbors”

You and I, my friend, we lend what we have to each other,
Handsaws and tree pruners, cars sometimes, and sugar.
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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,
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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.
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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,
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Our big hands to the small hands of the mighty race of children,
Our big words to their small syllables, our ideas awaiting theirs.
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This book of ours together has no ending written for it yet.
Its stories have unfamiliar faces, but not unfamiliar hopes.
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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,
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The last page of memory, and the webpage of today.
Tomorrow’s page has not yet been printed, and may not be –
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Perhaps it will be made of flying things, pages that come to us
Like bird wings through the air. This page might be anything.
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However it makes itself, however we read, or hear, or taste it,
Let us think that it will be good, because we were good.

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“Knowledge Neighbors” from A Small Story About the Sky. Copyright © 2015 by Alberto Ríos. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press. See coppercanyonpress.org.