On school nights, Dewey's decimals guided
my cart's wheelspin through labyrinthine rows.
Near-sighted old men came in to read the Sun,

the Enquirer, the Times. Their wives pecked
at the books-on-tape. Children spun through the spinning
racks while their mothers pocketed romances

into paper bags. There were the yellers, unhappy
with fines. Those who couldn't find what
they wanted, those who didn't know what to find.

At night, the lonesome man who slunk through the aisles
like yolk on a skillet's shine. I didn't mind
my ordering work. I breathed the books, the older

the better. Oily, woody, spiced like mushrooms
or vanilla. When the librarians weren't looking,
I pulled hardbacks from the top shelf, popped

their spines. On the inside cover's spread,
the brown spots of an avocado's inner fruit.
Mold bloomed no matter what we did. I haunted

that floor, so motionless that the lights cut out.
The millions of printed pages raised my hair,
and I waited in the opacity, glad of it. Each night,

I hung the "Closed" sign, then braced for the metal slam
of books falling from the drop box to the receiving bin.
Sometimes, I think, all night they tumbled in.