The Book

Suzanne Morris

October 8, 2023

–after Machinery’s Handbook,

  for Machine Shop and Drafting-Room, 1946 edition

I came so close

to giving it away.

Not carelessly– no, never– 

but to someone half your age

whom you loved like a son

who would

deeply reverence

the encyclopedic tome,

I was sure, as I composed

a letter to him,

would tenderly turn

thin yellowing leaves

while pieces of spine

flaked off and fell

like tiny steel shavings

spiraling to the floor

the book by now almost as old as

you were at the end

and every bit as

well-seasoned and weary.

But then, with the book

open in my hands

I came to see it as

the only tangible link to

the young entrepreneur

starting out in his trade

over fifty years ago:

those long nights under

the shop lights, and

no one there but you,

designing essentials that

no one would see

so ships could sail and

planes could fly

the book’s deep green cloth cover

grimy from hasty hands

seeking the guidance

on offer inside

the oil-smudged pages of

logarithms and mathematical tables

you turned to again and again.

I’ve wrapped the book snugly

and put it away

feeling somehow humbled as

the last person ever to know

all the book has to say about

the hard-working

man who owned it.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist and poet.  Her poems have appeared in online journals including Texas Poetry Assignment, New Verse News, Arts Alive San Antonio, Stone Quarterly Review, The Pine Cone Review, and The Emblazoned Soul.  She lives in Cherokee County.