Miss Brody’s Joy of Dusting

In the library stacks of dust,
there’s a “Dictionary of Enigmas,”
a book not opened in years,
obvious because when it was opened,
the cover squealed,
the pages groaned as they crumbled.

Like angels,
for many, enigmas are at once any and everywhere,
like a separate species of winged fantasies,
making the sky-of-minds so dense at dusk with imagination,
that one has to wave arms aggressively
just to keep some modicum of reality for one’s grounding.

Now, with sun’s rays
penetrating through tall windows,
the library aisles are quiet,
imagination and fantasies huddle
in other dusty unopened books
the great answer to wisdom’s mystery
waiting on some aisle Miss Brody
passes every day on her rounds
of ostrich feather dusting,
trying to keep it all present,
relative,
timely.

She tips her head,
tilts from left to right as she dusts,
listening to the books whispering their romance
of the not-yet-imagined.

Most hear nothing,
but Miss Brody does.