Burning Blake

Some people would burn Blake to boil tea, if need be.
A small, invisible daisy of flame waits to bloom under
each book the day the streets are empty but for patrols,
or the day the sun turns red giant, brushing everything
with hands like books of matches. Trust me, the last
copy of this book will be thrown in a fire, to keep warm,
or something away. Times will be tough. Or, times
will be muck, a soft loam with the remains of a book
emergent through a tectonic crack of some kind, waiting
resplendent, to be collected, filed away with a click
in a cabinet when such things are of interest only to alien
eyes, the way a somnolent scientist collects dew.
A book is a bucket of sand that wants to be the beach,
or a grinning, clumsy monster, patchwork lurching lady.
That’s why the dead should digress, even if on thin sails
of paper: if minutes made a sound like boxcars on rails,
we’d simply work to tune it out, preferring the lush tide.