So I just plugged my external hard drive into my shiny new computer for the first time, and clicked on a folder titled ‘IMPORTANT STUFF’.  This hard drive, I should warn you, is mainly home to photos, videos and documents from my first laptop purchased circa 2007.  I replaced it in 2011 when I returned to college, because commuting with a 17″ laptop is not really practical.  Anyway, the first thing in my IMPORTANT STUFF folder was this poem I wrote about Fyvie Castle’s library in sixth year. Here it is, exactly the same way it was submitted in 2008.

 

BOUND

A poem by Kirsty Louise Brown

Encased in red paper,

The room is a key to the past.

As books sit silently on their shelves-

faded, dusty, old.

Waiting to be used.

Waiting to be read by the eyes of their master,

Trying to pull him in,

Not realising that now he is gone.

A man used to slide them off their shelf-

gentle, silent, smooth.

In Summer they would sit on the windowsill

And heat in the suns bright gaze.

And on the long, cold, winter nights,

They’d sit beside a roaring fire

Held in a golden frame.

The curtains hung, pulled together

Behind them it was black.

Together they experienced life-

The man and his books,

But then he grew old

And succumbed to eternity.

Set in stone,

He sits above them gazing down-

waiting, crying, silent.

Longing to watch the intelligent words

Dance across the pages.