Between ('94)

Who knows who you will cross in a library
other than schoolkids eager to scan microfilm
or transients who use the chairs to doze
because they're padded, or lapsed academics
attempting to find more time in which to learn
or the wealthy widow looking for a mystery?
Often they're people who just don't know what to do
with all time on their hands, too curious to sleep,
too tired to read, amorous enough to cut the pages
from Esquire perhaps. For them life lacks secrets
while for the schoolkids it promises. So curiosity
moves them to read about dinosaurs without
the first thought being the cause of extinction.
After all that grazing prehistoric grass, no matter
how many flowers on the prairie they scattered--
by comets stoned, weather starved, dinosaurs were passé.
But the kids are too busy to mock regulars who snooze
on mounds of dailies, or crackpots whose theories
academies refuse to confirm. Surrounded by chances
for a better life they cannot use, better they rest
as if a bed of news features and stock market reports
were a tarpit, a place for bones to lie
between destinations, one meant, but one approaching.