(21.2367605815)²

by Richard Tornello

Old enough to remember when?
Young enough to question then?
Why?
Without the engines of search?
Just your fingers and your eyes?
And cards?
Into the stacks, yard after yard
Up and down, side-by-side
OCLC and the decimal system
Coordinated to be found?
What ho, are you mentally unbound?

It’s claimed,
Where sometime a surprise is bound.
Or other time serendipitous,
A great lost work, miss catalogued is found.
All and all the works were there
To be found and studied for you and history
Both fine and in disrepair.

For those of you who
desire that old time feeling,
those books of old,
to feel and to smell
to touch and to hold.
We’ve brought back library lending,
some technology new, and withstanding
the ravages of time and light
from acidic paper and wormy blight.
Our product responds to light
And to your brain waves flight.
Please do recall Dr. Hawking's brain.
It did work ‘tween a wheelchairs frame.

So to you and you alone
Will have access to these historical tomes.

We’d like lending for free of course
But we’re in businesses intercourse
We can’t feed family or keep a roof
With out some form of cost to you.
Used books for sale are not our game.
You know they’re no longer allowed to play
Could be contraband or subversive too.
We stepped outside the museum for you to view
And we’ve taken a much different avenue.
With the law on our side allowing us to create
A ride down memory lane… for a price
And controlled per view
For all, and for all that’s nice.