When I was a child, a bookshelf
was the way to hush my mouth.
Beautiful beams of literature in light
from that bookshelf bound the tongue
and sent me off to study peppery pages  
covered in smudges of satiny dust.

Deacons declaimed our destiny dust,
but I’d found the oak bookshelf.
Scribes transcribed yellowing pages,
leafy rolls herded from its mouth,
made to tamp the quibbling tongue
that would thwart our travels to the light.

Come careful light,
born at the dawn and clearing of dust—
a mirror clarion-made by the tongue—
my heart—and murmurs from the bookshelf—
the open and giving mouth
of so many books and pages—

whether in tales of knights and pages
seizing the cup of Christ’s light,
or delving dagger deep into Grendel’s mouth,
steeped in blank verse and dust
on Seamus Heaney’s bookshelf.
Then the tongue—

a fiery tongue
speaking crinkle pages
catalogued bizarre on a bookshelf,
lit by a simple wavering light
lit by candle illumining dust
falling from the roof of its mouth.

I love you Uncle Whitman! Mouth
happy words of your multitudes! Tongue—
hear us Shakespeare!  No!  Dust
will not claim Plath or Millay! Pages
of Chaucer, plates of Blake’s light
and shadow’ll not fade from my bookshelf!

And on your bookshelf, my simple mouth,
and Light-American from my tongue.
Our best pages will not fall to dust.