Old books, I have a few of these,
collected over the years,
one a history of an ancestor who settled New York
in 1643, then called New Sweden,
another a faded booklet by Adrienne Rich,
The Dream of a Common Language, Poems 1974-1977,
a set of postcards of Frida Khalo's paintings, and
her memoir: My Art, My Life;
even a child's story, Little Sister Snow,
written in 1909, a rare gift from my mother,
back when I first fell in love with books.
Yes, I have downsized, but these old books
I keep close, for they affirm our common experiences,
even as one by one, I begin to reread them
to understand the past all over again
and why these books were once
so important to me.
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