Dear Readers,
This is the third installment of work written by my middle school students. In this poem, Angela Reasoner beautifully captures the magic that an old bookshelf can hold for us—the imagined world within each beloved book, the personal odds and ends that tend to collect alongside the books (no matter how hard we try to keep the space tidy). Moreover, Angela manages to be sincere without being saccharine; she offers us her trademark humor alongside her loving ode, and the effect is spectacular! I know you’ll enjoy this poem as much as I do.
Ashleigh
(source: www.hermanstudios.com)
William Joyce, Sarah J. Maas, Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins,
All at my disposal.
My own personal storytellers lined up on display.
Notebooks, gum, chapstick, a small gumball machine,
You name it, and my towering seven-shelf castle
Probably has it.
This cottage-brown hunka junk,
Patiently stands idly by,
Oozing with unexplored worlds.
I put things on this patient servant,
Useless things, mostly: headphones, seashells, a rock,
I attempt to remove it all, but it has latched on.
Like a child to their blanket,
The junk stays,
Adding a calming look to this small library.
But I love it, the smooth maybe creamy way it feels
As I run my thumb down this castle’s wooden walls.
Walls that protect Harry Potter and Aelin Galathynius.
And the way it stands tall and proud, watching over
The world I call my bedroom.
Watching me sleep peacefully under its protection.
But, what I truly love about it,
Is that it keeps my most prized possessions that
Have yet to completely surrender to modern tech,
Completely safe yet so vulnerable,
So welcoming, yet so taunting,
And oh-so-kind.
Yes, I love my bookshelf so much,
That I even wrote a poem about it :>