Outside the library, there grows a yard
of lawn-like grass, a triangle of green,
where canines bred to hunt, retrieve, or guard
review the scents of passers-by. The scene
around that place, amid the dirt and dew,
appears the same as what occurs inside:
a bunch of mammals reading what is new
in journals where the ink has barely dried.

Among that lawn grow untrimmed sycamores,
with leafless branches fanning out as they
elongate from the trunks. They seem to draw
vitality from sky of morning gray,
as if the limbs were veins and arteries
of earth, exposed in air for all to see.