Cover to Cover

A book can be more
than its words and its pages.

When I trekked to my chum’s home
up the street years ago,
clay Lincoln on his first days of school,

we flipped through pages and pages
in a quiet little study in his house.
The words sounded good to me.

My friend’s mom oft times would set out
milk and cookies for us to eat,
planets of dirt and rock
circling two white stars.

The earth is a blue marble
with white swirls from the sterile rock
of the moon. The milk and the cookies
tasted good to me.

The words and the pages went by
so fast then, like a bus you run after
but miss, and you knew the end
was coming. The ephemeral perfection

of goldilocks planet has always been
that it is not too hot and not too cold,
with just the right amount of water.
It occurred to me on one of those

unspeaking afternoons that my death
was like my book and I was on chapter four.
I wasn’t troubled because there was still
so far to go. Given the big bang,

like an explosion of planets from the head
of a ruderal species, futures of finite
and infinite duration are both possible
depending upon physical properties

and the expansion rate. One rainy afternoon
I learned my friend’s mother had died.
The drapes in the study were drawn shut
and the house was so cold and so dark.

I didn’t know what to do.
But I knew there was no time
to waste.  I knew there was
no time to waste.

So I gathered up all of my books
in my bag and started
the long trudge back home.
And now Big Ben chimes,

the shrill tea kettle boils, barking
dogs to feed, and my rattling car’s
around the shop for repairs.
But I know there is no time to waste.

- Gil Hoy