four hundred shelves of philosophy,
bound in dark leather and gold,
explaining what humans were meant to be
in words that are centuries old.
descartes says i think and therefore i am,
spinoza has god in the wood,
and kant writes a rule with a moral diagram
on how to be completely good.
i folded page ninety of somebody's grief
into wings with a crease down the fold,
and launched it across in the quiet relief
of a room that was solemn and cold.
it flew past the logic, it flew past the doubt,
it banked by the index on art,
and landed right where an old book fell out
on how reason dismantles the heart.
the librarian shushed me with glasses pulled low,
saying wisdom requires some grace,
while a three-rupee plane made of words long ago
had just won the celestial race.