An Ode to Public Libraries from a Formerly Curious Black Child Whose World was Opened Because Their Doors Were
Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future. - Ray Bradbury
one.
in the beginning was the word and the word was a vagabond/traversing space and time in hopes to build family/and the word was joined by other words/and those words were fruitful and multiplied into colonies of language/and those colonies consisted of tongues that spun phrases from a tapestry of dialects and accents/those families of verbs and nouns and adjectives found temporary residence on tablets and scrolls and pages and eventually bonded with parchment to become books/and those books lived a mighty long time in the private quarters of the privileged/locked away from an outside world that hungered for information.
The American library was born in 1731, christened as public domain in 1833/for a time, its treasures was secluded to subscribers/for a time, it was the domain of the wealthy/for a time, the sons and daughters and mothers and fathers of stolen Africans were banned from entering its world of words after learning to read that which they were never meant to comprehend.
two.
I am a descendant of Louisville 1905, the home of the first free Black public library/rather, I am a product of the Delmont Village library of 1980s Baton Rouge/the one that sat catercorner to the Picadilly/the one that my mother who taught reading to special needs students first brought me to/the one where I rifled through card catalogs while working on my 6th grade research assignment and running into Fayona, my cute classmate with thick eyeglasses, who too was rummaging through cards of authors and titles, while I tried keeping cool and concealing my crush.
Before I knew of similar settings beyond my zip code, I was welcomed by the warmth of librarians who worked in impoverished areas/where the dust that sprinkled the shelves and the hard wooden chairs that circled small square tables, demanded reverence despite my hometown’s best effort to ignore that they were there/my earliest lessons in silence…in sitting still with my thoughts were forged within those walls, where the cost of unlocking history and fantasy and periodicals and encyclopedias were merely a plastic card and a 2-week promise to return.
three.
it is a chance I may not know love the way I know it, had it not been for the free WiFi of Goodwood Library. And what I mean is the woman who has my last name was once a Top 8 friend on MySpace when I was far too broke to afford the hi-speed connection that assisted me in shooting my shot. In my vagabond era, when home and family felt most distant, I read magazines and found resources, and shared poetry advice with the soon-to-be love of my life, courtesy of broadband that only cost me the price of entering the building/the library’s love language was always consistent, come in…take a seat…cool off…here’s a passport to worlds that came before you which can also be used for a future beyond the scope of your keystrokes/
I could say those library computers were Cupid’s wingmen back when those hatin’ ass limited minutes on my phone tried to throw shade on the sunlight I was walking toward/but I don’t want to minimize my summer 2006 memories to those free Windows XP’s transmitting my yearning to her PC/because to do so is to tell an incomplete story/when I felt as if my young adult life was falling to shambles/when it did not seem likely I’d be able to dine beyond the dollar menu let alone plan a dinner for two/I spent a many of days walking past that circular desk, head spinning with angst not knowing what would become of me/but I never once felt judged - only assisted.. given access…embraced.
four.
they want to defund our libraries/they want to ban stories they cannot redact for their comfort/they want to deprive us of resources, but no/not now/not in this lifetime nor the next/once, I was assigned to teach poetry workshops at a pair of community libraries/where the target audience were neighborhood kids left to melt in July’s swelter/and once upon that time a city councilman tried to deny those babies the ability to write metaphors/because he was not aware of the wonder of tiny hands raised in excitement to read rough drafts out loud/was not versed on the value of a seven-week session of air conditioned rooms, Capri Suns, and snack chips/in a city whose summers historically wilted blooming futures.
if they had their way/there would be a tax levied on our curiosity/the doors of our literary lighthouses would remain sealed/a helping hand would transmute into a transactional one/and a library card would not be currency enough to open portals to worlds unknown.
five.
in the future there are libraries as libraries are gardens/grounds from which literacy grows/soil that cultivates safe spaces/archives that offer solid earth for our next chapters to emerge from/fertilized by the history they hold/in the future there are librarians who come from a lineage of librarians/ who hold wisdom that cannot be replaced by anything artificial/who are still pointing grandmothers in the direction of bathrooms and still asking children to quiet down a bit/who are still resourceful and still planning programs/still decorating according to the seasons and still repeating the same answers to commonly asked questions
in the future there is still the word joined by generations of words that have found refuge in repositories/in reading rooms that have not been destroyed by the failed attempts of dictators/and we will have lived lives bookended by the ability to step into buildings created to be of service…to serve us.
It’s Sunday. The Writing Resistance Workshop is TODAY! Register at donneyrose.info/workshops. Paid subscribers to Observations In Blackness can join at no additional cost. Link to register for paid subscribers
