Perambulating Wandering Library

The light arrives a little earlier each day, slips sideways
through the birch stands where the frost still clings
to bark, like lace, and something moves between
the silver trunks, unhurried, vast, a shape
that shouldn’t fit where trees grow close: a library
on mismatched feet, dozens of them, walking
slow as winter’s end, its shelves and gables
swaying as it goes, and from below
the chatter rises, foot to foot, a hundred voices
arguing about the path, debating whether left
or right will take them where they need, discussing
how the snow feels underfoot this morning,
softer than it was, complaining cheerfully
about the weight of all those books they bear.
The woods know this old friend, step aside
to let it lumber through the undergrowth,
its shadow pooling strange across the snow,
the feet still nattering amongst themselves
about the quality of moss, the give of earth,
and then it’s gone, melted back into the green-dark
where the ancient trees grow thick and stories
gather in the roots. The air tastes different
where it passed, like paper aged in oak,
like knowledge moving slow as sap, and Quickenlight
holds its breath, waiting for the light to lengthen,
for the ground to wake, for what the wandering shelves
might bring to those who walk these woods
when winter starts to fray and Imbolc
lights its careful flame against the cold.