The Library

What wonders are to be found in the driftwood of words
From an ocean ebbing and flowing in phrases
From distant islands of nouns, adjectives and verbs
Here on the shoreline of this place called Library

Where swirling currents and tides of sentences
Inscribe cursive stories in the sand
To expand timelessly into sheer cliffs of composition
From which pages of fact and fiction soar like seabirds

A place to voyage through history, conflicts and cultures
Navigating charts of languages and dialects
What place for warship Google in this domain of Britannica?
With its old maps of paper, ink and dusted dust.

Imbibers of romance, adventure, war and worship
Explorers of genres, similes and metaphors
Is it inspiration they seek to borrow?
Or just the lending rights to imagination.

Strange, but beautiful this beach head called Library
Blessed by silence yet with virtues to be trumpeted
A tranquil refuge for curators, the curious and creative
A compass and tiller in the quest for understanding

What beacon leads us to this harbour of wordsmiths
Where readers touch bows with writers
Buoyant together across each page and chapter
Until anchors aweigh and they are forever acquainted?

Here the only sense of order is dewey or alphabetical
But a solid shelter against the fake and superficial
No place for shallow thoughts or unfurled sails
Instead, to be set free for the horizons of yourself.

Trevor Gill lives on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. A former daily columnist, sporting and feature writer with News Limited, he is the author of five published books and is currently working on his sixth. Trevor enjoys incorporating poetic form in his writing. He is a past board member of Falie Project Limited, former chairman of SA Tall Ships Incorporated and past chairman of Yorke Peninsula’s Saltwater Classic, roles dedicated to celebrating South Australia’s maritime history.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.