Solace in a Bookcase

Titles and topics a portal into a person’s soul

What do they tell you,
the spines of those books,
some thick, some thin,
squeezed in like sardines
between precious photos
and old bookends?

Individually,
maybe not much.
Collectively, 
the titles and topics
provide a portal
into that person’s soul.

The Vogue Sewing Book,
Hymns for The Living Church,
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
A History of God,
A History of the Jews,
West Virginia & The State of Its People,
West Virginia in Color,
The Pillsbury Family Cookbook,
An Incomplete Education,
A Treasure of Great Poems,
The Best American Short Stories of 2014,
The Ambition of Power,
Profiles of JFK, RFK, and Edward Kennedy,
Jackie and The Other Mrs. Kennedy,
Hillary, Michelle and Barack,
and Susan Rice’s Tough Love
on just a couple of the shelves.

They’re but a piece
of a personal mosaic 
curated over decades,
along with pictures of grandmothers
and great grandmothers surrounded
by squirming grandchildren,
a portrait of four siblings
ages eight to 23,
taken somewhere 
out in the hills
in Southeastern Ohio
on a bright Fall day, 
brilliant blazing reds, 
burnt oranges, crisp yellows, 
drab browns.

A grade school picture 
of a beaming son,
braces gleaming.  
A middle-aged couple 
in a tux and a gown,
likely off to church
for the wedding
of a grown child.
 
A faded black & white photo,
barely bigger than a postage stamp,
of a teenage girl standing 
with her arm around her father’s waist,
his arm around her bare shoulder,
she in a sleeveless plaid shirt and jeans,
he in a woolly rolled-collar sweater
and flannel pants,  
his right arm 
hanging straight down,
a lit cigarette dangling 
between his fingers.

There’s a heavy  
clear glass insulator
taken from some abandoned
electric pole 
long ago,
now a bookend.

There’s a clear glass puppy
the size of a tennis ball,
sitting on its haunches,
staring forward,
guarding, 
eyes on the prizes 
on those shelves.

A thick family bible 
bound in black leather
lies horizontally 
across the tops 
of the books on 
the middle shelf. 

Its pages
dog eared,
its cover cracked 
and peeling from age 
and frequent openings 
into its reader’s soul.