The Library's Book

There are unbearable things to bear, There is a place I dare not speak of And we have all been there. Gwendolyn MacEwen The Name of the Place The Shadow-Makers, 1969 It wasn’t meant to be mine, yet Each word belonged to me. The poet, her desires and regrets, A sweetness that painfully bleeds Into my veins, into my thoughts, A long-awaited transfusion-- A blue flame soothing a blue moth That named the stranger I’ve become. I must return what is not mine, Though each line has burrowed deep, And the echoes of her grieving pines Will not let me sleep, how can I sleep? Back it must go to sulk on a shelf. Returned: one thin book. Found: myself.