A poem a day: Libraries like icebergs
Author:
Hannah Mettner
Publisher:
Te Herenga Waka University Press
ISBN:
9781776921157
Date Published:
10 August
Pages:
88
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$25.00
Aotearoa celebrates Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day on Friday when poetry will pop up in churches, bookshops, libraries and out on the streets through music, poets sharing an open mic, book launches, poetry walks and more. Here at Kete, we’ve started early with a poem each day this week. Libraries like icebergs is from Hannah Mettner’s second collection Saga.
Libraries like icebergs
Proximity to the library is having one’s hand on the pulse of the
universe. It’s turning to see a dear friend in a room absolutely rotten with
strangers. It’s looking down on a familiar city from a great height, sweat
cooling on your back, and it’s still, so still, that you might’ve missed the
apocalypse. It’s the streetlight blinking when you walk below it, a small
owl calling from the bush beyond the fence. It’s that barometric lift
of understanding when thoughts move like weather, like emotion. It’s
the feeling of extreme up-closeness that comes from finding out more,
and then more again, about the person you love. The secret dimness of
the backstage. It’s the feeling I had as a child reading The Borrowers,
imagining the whole world in cross-sectioned miniature—that’s how I
see the library—like a doll’s house, hinged open at its heart, tiny readers
bent over tiny books. Being inside the library is like flying inside a
cloud—shut off from the outside, riding out its knocks and bumps.
Libraries, like mushrooms all connected underground, like hibernation,
like glimpsing the glittering elbow of a gem poking out of dark rock.
Libraries, like icebergs, balancing out the seen with the great unseen,
all that knowledge stacked below the surface, keeping us all afloat.
Libraries, like icebergs, disappearing.
From Saga by Hannah Mettner (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $25.00)
To read more about Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day, see https://tinyurl.com/5n998vxm
To learn more about Saga, see https://tinyurl.com/5hexs2zf
