Window Well in the Carnegie Library

SITTING IN THE WINDOW WELL

OF THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY IN PITTSBURGH

READING AND WRITING IN MY NOTEBOOK

CANCELLING THE MUSEUM SCHEDULE

I'm going to just sit here

reading Sam Hamill's

Gratitude and Dumb Luck poems.

The librarian said I could take

as many books as I wanted

and sit in those soft leather chairs

and leave them when I finished.

in the museum from here in the stacks.

She walked me up back stairs

to August Wilson's work. She didn't know

she had taken me home. Fool

that I am I didn't know myself.

I knew I'd found gold, doubting

I could sit among people reading

without distractions, surrounded

by treasure.  As she left,

she says, Look out those windows

you can see the dinosaur below

in the history museum.

That's how I got here,

to this window sill, tucked away.

Distractions and dumb luck.

Jim Bodeen

20 April 2019