A Comfortable Host

   A Comfortable Host 

Horizons meld hills for eyes to climb,
Far distance blurs their sharp images,
Also, does the real passage of time.
Nineteen twenty one (1921), vestiges

Long gone : trolleys and their rust weary rails,
Rutted cobblestones, worn down brick,
Etchings of wagon wheels mark their trails.
Four score years grows memories thick.

The Century Club chose Potts's High Street
Casselberry House for it's beginning.
Forty years there, double it, repeat,
Forty years while still remembering :

The smell of linseed from shoe hardened old wood
That squeaked and groaned with each foot step.
Dappled light peeking in where tall windows stood.
"Shhh ! Be quiet, please !" Rules strictly kept.

When words emerge from their book covers :
Distance alters and time accepts change,
Dreams seek children, their fathers and mothers,
Stories flow rivers, climb mountains, ride range.

Facts flow from open pages into the mind
And swells clear, deep streams of knowledge.
Wonder grows wisdom we all may find,
Cause reading hones that sharpened edge.

Libraries draw far off horizons close,
Time finds them a comfortable host.

   Ronald C . Downie

Written for the occasion and read to the assembled commemorating  the eightieth anniversary of the founding of The Pottstown Public Library .(2001)