Bookcases

Almost Sunrise 
 
The bookcases of one-by-six planed pine
All screwed to dark but open basement beams
Are how I feel the language of my dreams
Twist hidden deep within each antique line.

I rarely read these books and none are fine
And no one wants them anymore it seems.
Like waters from some minds' now frozen streams
They'd flow for someone’s eyes, perhaps for mine.

Sometimes when lost I find a letter there
Recalling handwriting from someone dear
Suggesting paths forsaken in the past.
The words she wrote were reasoned well with care.
The details I forgot are once more clear.
The present waits then leads me home at last.

Linked to dVerse Poetics where Lillian is hosting with the theme of writing about something in your home that speaks to you and to last weeks’ Meeting the Bar with the sonnet theme.

Three Crows Come to Visit

Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

50 thoughts on “Bookcases”

  1. Love your sharing here, Frank. Books lines on those shelves….some read some not. Some waiting. And letters found there.
    “he present waits then leads me home at last.” I most especially like this line.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. I like in the first stanza, where you liken the screws holding the shelves in place to “the language of my dreams twist hidden” and how you navigate finding the old letters and revisit the past then return. lovely piece of writing

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  10. Hmm.. Frank This Reminds
    Me i Do Love Poems
    But Hand
    Written
    Notes
    in Flow
    Are Set So
    Free From Time
    Smiles Where has
    Hand Writing Gone
    Analog To Digital as
    We Do Our Best to make
    Original Strokes out of Plastic Keys
    And Fiber
    Optic
    Cable
    Thin FlesH and Blood
    i am so lucky
    as my Hand
    Writing Looks Like Crow CR8P Without
    Wings in Chicken Scratch No Where to Fly..;)

    Liked by 2 people

  13. First I like the theme a lot… bookshelves are wonderful in their own right… but I find it so interesting with all those books we keep and never read. So many books we keep (I cannot throw away a book)… but for the first octet you have kept the books as a static background, and then the volta in the sextet the books come alive with those letters you kept…

    Great sonnet Frank

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  14. I love this Frank. And it’s one of the reasons I love old books too. I order used books from a online store, and I have found cards, letters, and notes in them. It’s the coolest feeling… and makes me wonder about the person who wrote them.

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  16. The handwritten letter sparked the last stanza for me. We seldom read actual books anymore as we have gone digital. We all donated to the library, hoping it brings joy to others.

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  19. Allow me to accuse you of writing a devious sonnet, where books are memories — not books — stacked on dark shelves, secured in the basement of the mind. Every now and then some sweet, sacred memory comes into sight, as if dropped out of an opened volume. Perhaps you intended to read (reminisce), but became distracted by the unsought after missive.

    Or perhaps I’m reading more than what was written….

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  20. How we word-lovers adore libraries … stockrooms of the deep mind … And what bits of heart and history are tucked away. I remember a house my family moved into when I was 6 or 7, there was a study with a library (even a rolling ladder), filled with books dating back to the 1850s. Poring through those books (marveling in the things which fell out) was a waking to a long dream I found myself again in your sonnet. Thanks. Odd choice of pix.

    Like

  21. Fun how you took ordinary objects – books, bookcase, letters – and wove them into a sonnet on memories. Enjoyed your wordplay with “planed pine” and the idea of memory flowing like water. I also got a kick out of how you observe books not only as storage units (on the shelves) for language lost but objects like old letters. A fine piece of writing – beautifully evocative and sensitive.

    Liked by 1 person

  22. when I try to throw a book away I feel like I am setting aperson out on the curb to be incenerated, unless the book was already pure garbage, but I don’t have many of those. 😉

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