April Celebrations - and Remembrances

April is the time for some of our favorite occasions – National Library Week, National Volunteer Week and National Poetry Month.  To celebrate all three at once, we offer the following poem, which was composed by Ann Jepson, Ridgefield Library friend and Friend extraordinaire who passed away last week.

Elegy on the Obsolescence of Libraries

This morning

I was reminded of that smartest

and most social of farm animals,

the pig --

how in the days of the family farm

a little before feeding time

they would line up at the trough

in anticipation of the feast to come,

boars, sows, piglets

all waiting for the gate to open

and the morsels to flow,

rinds, peels, breakfast’s wake-up grounds,

noon’s lunch, last night’s dinner,

a sleepless night’s snack, celebration’s sweets,

all the rewards of man’s abundant repasts.

So when I went to the library

ten minutes before opening time

and saw that smartest and most social of the primates,

the human --

man, woman, child

waiting in anticipation for the doors to open

to peruse or check out

cd’s, dvd’s biographies, memoirs, fiction,

nonfiction, poetry, newspapers, magazines,

travel books, computer programs,

all the rewards of the race’s reveries,

I thought - Naysayers,

we will be here,

waiting at the trough,

for some time to come.