Comparative reading


Too serious for the frivolity, the gawdy posters
of the children’s department, you spent hours alone
with the comfort-smell of dust and dry paper,
the wood polish and antique waft
of the reference section of Cornish Library
You carefully turned huge atlas pages,
traced coastlines with your small fingers
Checked out only bird guides, returned them
when you’d memorized wingspans and breeding ranges

Meanwhile, in the bright air conditioning of the Westwood branch,
I bee-lined for the candy-covered laughs
of Bruno and Boots, Judy Blume,
searched the shelves for any crisp new book
(the thrill to being first, ever, to peel open the cover,
wolf down those pristine words)
I hefted stacks of paperbacks on the counter
and waited for a librarian, round or thin, to nod her approval

You chose your own adventure from the saffron frames
of National Geographic – the more remote the better –
and I watched for the latest issue of Owl,
which my Mom would prop in the front window,
so I could see it as I rounded the corner home for lunch

Your family had Collier’s Encycolpedia and when I tell you
we had World Book I hear the old jealousy in your voice,
know how you yearned for the luscious colour plates,
the strata of clear plastic that built the shocking entry for Human Body

But we were both drawn to the flame red braids of Anne Shirley
You’re still proud of the softcover you brought home as a classroom prize
and I tell you about the thick early edition my sisters and I read and reread,
the soft pages that also bear my Mom’s young fingerprints