poking the sewn fabric out with a wooden chopstick
–more tickets, more pieces per hour.
So, in a drawer, the library cards now lay
buried under curling pages of S&H Green Stamps.
Later, their own children cried
for one more story, just one more,
and, recalling their days in the stacks,
they tried to go back on weekends
with the kids in tow,
but running out to Copley Square
was easier said than done.
And soon their children
and the children’s children
no longer knew the thrill
of a finger run along the spines,
the catalog of yellowed cards in Dewey decimals,
the hush of hallowed haunts and whispered rhymes.
But one day the young
borrowed and renewed the elders’ dream,
passing it from teen to teen and screen to screen,
until the hope was in our throats
the words were on our lips again—
a library for Chinatown renewed!—
by Lydia Lowe. This poem was written to celebrate the return of library services to Boston Chinatown, more than 60 years after the library was razed during Urban Renewal.
Featured Image:
Opening of Boston Chinatown Library. Photo courtesy of Chinatown Community Land Trust.
Beautiful.
Fills my heart. Thank you!