Where The Books Go When We’re Gone
space: black
spaceships: grey
stars: bright
if you stare for long enough you might
notice a ship floating by lined
with millions of paperbacks and fine
press books, maybe eight or nine
million in one shipment flying
in fleets of three at a time,
you can see the spines
of the books through the giant
windows, the manuscript of jeremiah,
the first draft of catcher in the rye—
i thumbed through the shelves with
my eye when zzzzzzhh—
a sector shut down and zzzzzzhh
another sector of the sky library shut down
zzzzzzzzzzhhhhhhhhhhh
all three ships lost power
the silent humming stopped and
refrigerated words began to thaw
while the ship floated on
the humans are long since
dead but their books are in our libraries
their time for immortality has come
and their time for divinity has past
but fear not
even we are subject to the gods—
one day an asteroid may crash the sky
library back to earth and your book
will come tumbling out onto the heavens
below and an angel may read it,
the devil may care, he’ll turn it into the gospel
and you will become one above us.