Ode to an Encyclopedia

“Questing Beast of blue and gold, you were my companion” /

O hefty hardcover on the built-in shelf in my parents’ living room,
O authority stamped on linen paper, molted from your dust jacket,
Questing Beast of blue and gold, you were my companion

on beige afternoons that came slanting through the curtains
behind the rough upholstered chair. You knew how to trim a sail
and how the hornet builds a hive. You had a topographical map

of the mountain ranges on the far side of the moon
and could name the man who shot down the man
who murdered Jesse James. At forty, I tell myself

that boyhood was all enchantment: hanging around the railway,
getting plastered on cartoons; I see my best friend’s father
marinating in a lawn chair, smiling benignly at his son and me

from above a gin and tonic, or sitting astride his roof
with carpentry nails and hammer, going at some problem
that kept resisting all his mending. O my tome, my paper brother,

my narrative without an ending, you had a diagram of a cow
broken down into the major cuts of beef, and an image
of the Trevi Fountain. The boarding house,

the church on the corner: all that stuff is gone.
In winter in Toronto, people say, a man goes outside
and shovels snow mostly so that his neighbors know

just how much snow he is displacing. I’m writing this
in Baltimore. For such a long time, the boy wants
to grow up and be at large, but posture becomes bearing;

bearing becomes shape. A man can make a choice
between two countries, believing all the while
that he will never have to choose.

Copyright © 2015 by James Arthur. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 16, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets. Reprinted with permission.

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Also in this Issue

Issue 37 / December 10, 2015
  1. Editor's Note from December 10, 2015

    Issue 37: Children question God, how you beat your DNA, and keeping Creation together. /

  2. Two Hundred Questions a Day

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  3. Born to Be Wild?

    Maybe not. Just because something is written in our genetic code doesn’t mean our body will read it. /

  4. The Creator Is Closer

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  5. Wonder on the Web

    Issue 37: Links to amazing stuff.

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