Bookstore On Maui Poem by Hans Ostrom

If you'd prefer to paw
through and gaze at used books
when you're on Maui, drive
or cycle past the smoke-stacks
of the sugar-plant between
cane-fields. On a wire

above a frail, dignified
wooden church, a night heron
in daylight may be studying
the water in the irrigation ditch.

Further on down the road,
in an old house belonging to
the Maui Friends of the Library,
you'll meet a modest, musty
buffet of books,25 cents
a piece. Yes, there was a
church, without a steeple,
and here are the books.
Where are the people?

They're working, of course.
That sugar-factory, e.g.
Others are on beaches
and in bars, in shops and
cars. They're in the swelling,
lengthening anacondominiums,
eaters of capital, another
invasive species. And

people are also home in studio
apartments and tired bungalows,
recovering from double-shifts
in which, in some capacity,
they served touristic whims.

The books are on vacation,
away from the people. The shelves
are a residential hotel for words.
You stop by to say hello.