Guest Post: La Biblioteca is a Doula
It’s pretty obvious that we love libraries. But we’re hardly the only ones! Adam attended the opening of the East Forest Park branch of the Springfield Public Library on December 19th, where the city’s poet laureate, Magdalena Gómez, read the following poem. It really captures the magical spell libraries can cast - if we let them. Magdelena was kind enough to grant us permission to share her poem here on Library Land:
La Biblioteca is a Doula
When my saddle shoes were too big
so they might last beyond the year
I ran away from home
where yelling to be heard by the unheard
rattled in my skull; burial ground of secrets.
One foot met the other
like long lost friends
awkwardly skipping their way
into Saturdays, towards stacked
protective fortresses from
childhood’s dark labyrinths;
where underestimated
eyes of innocence
found immortal truths
understood more deeply
than the tall ones
with sour faces
who had dropped their smiles
on brutal roads of hunger,
on endless days of
earning just enough
from tightened fists
that grabbed too much.
The library door
where I found my Narnia.
Where I fell in love with Emerson.
Where I read Chinese women poets
and wrapped myself
in the silk of words,
of punctuation strung like pearls
stitching together the stops, the starts,
the questions, the breaths,
the echoes and exclamations unleashed
from a soul so new to the world,
so old to life.
Where I stood on tippy toes
to find the vast longings
of human history;
to find myself
gathering lost smiles
into dreamscapes
of resilience.
Musty books perfumed my imagination.
Crisp new books fell open
in my tiny hands
like tomorrow’s gold that promised
there would always be enough
in the temple where anything
is possible.
Where now, pressing into
Winter’s whim I am consoled
by the Velveteen Rabbit.
Magdalena Gómez, December, 2019
Magdelena Gomez
Magdalena Gómez is the Poet Laureate of Springfield, MA (2019-2021) One of her poetry collections, Shameless Woman, Red Sugarcane Press, NYC, is included in college syllabi throughout the country. Also a playwright, her most reason work, ERASED: a poetic imagining on the life of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (the first play ever written about Schomburg) features a Pan African jazz score by composer, Ben Barson. Ms. Gómez’s publishing credits include The Progressive; The Massachusetts Review; Los Angeles Times; and Honeysuckle Magazine; among many others. Her latest poem, And So the World..., will be featured in issue #133 of New Observations Magazine.