So many books, so little time

At Williston Memorial Library, Mount Holyoke College {South Hadley, Mass.}

“The chapter ends. And when I look up

from  a sunken pose in an easy chair

(half, or more than half, asleep?)

the height and heft of the room come back;

darkly, the pitched ceiling falls

forward like a book.

Even those mock-Tudor stripes

have come to seem like unread lines.

Oh, what I haven’t read!’’

From “Reading Room,’’  by Mary Jo Salter