I miss the Saturdays When I would just go into the city Always ending up at 42nd and 5th The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building Is its official name But I just called it the library If I had nothing else going on Waiting for a callback on a job Or just wanted to read a book I would always end up there Since I knew how to get to anywhere else And the high ceilings And the tables with their lamps Made me the most important person in the world Even if I was down to eating Dirty water dogs and drinking Pepsis Because I was down on my luck and broke Looking through some poetic tome Or scribbling in a dollar store notebook Until the dollar store Bic pen ran out of ink Told me I was one moment away From the sentence The poem The story That was about to anoint me The most famous author in the world But I never became famous And my palette changed from dirty water dogs And my Saturdays became occupied with other things And other locales would occupy my scribblings And now I have a desk looking out a window Wondering what happened to the doe that used to wander Near my front door I have to find an open Saturday Whenever the city returns to what it was And climb those marble steps Which was not for the faint of heart back then let alone now Find something in the catalogue to peruse Find a seat with a lamp or so I hope And find out why I did all this in the first place.
Lawrence Miles
Lawrence Miles is a poet living in White Plains, NY.
The Library Love Letter 