Somewhere there's a book

A poem.  I seem to be averaging about one a year of those of late.  No matter, things wax and wane in importance, and I often think the world is running out of wall space for pictures and poems anyway.

~

Somewhere there’s a book.

The one you didn't write and never will.

Give me time, you always said,

to figure out the plot, but still

the story stays unfinished,

unedited, unbound, unread.

Somewhere there’s a book

stored. It’s not so much a case

of how we cook the books as how

the books cook us.  However rare

we think we are and like things,

we seldom can quite stomach ourselves raw.

Somewhere there’s a book,

she said. For sure, there were

ten thousand, maybe more,

floor to ceiling tapestried

with them, their mad-eye spines

lettered up and down regardless.

Somewhere there’s a book

you cannot find. Slipped between

its pages, barely readable, a letter

from one who only wished to see you,

and asked, not ‘who are you?’

but ‘who are you?’

Somewhere there’s a book

containing an account.  And does it hold

the things of worth, or tell the worth of things?

A talent is a tally is a tell;

the untold things might yet be read there,

counted, valued, told.