books

My Poem ‘Reading is Believing’

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Libraries are closing everywhere I look;
the doors of places of knowledge and wonder
are being closed shut, like the covers of there books;
our breathtaking banks of inspiration are no longer protected;
I one day fear that children will miss out
on a magical and life-empowering experience,
should our libraries evaporate into a cloud of numbers and frequencies,
and as a result the future of the world will be affected.

Every day I hear about another library
under threat from being turned into a “used to be”;
every day I see people reading and entranced in a story;
every day I see people in bookstores being drawn to books
by their title and the incredible art of their covers;
every day adults and children fall in love with books
and characters for the first time –
thanks to teachers, friends, family members, fathers, and mothers.

Every second a new writer, a brand new story-teller, is born,
and continues the story of humanity;
every baby who is brought up to loving parents,
in an incredible family, is introduced to reading,
and sharing ideas, from almost the day
that they get to sleep in their own bed;
every experience has its own voice,
and some have even been reinterpreted in the form of a novel,
and then adapted into a movie.

There is no more sad or depressing story, to me,
than that of a nearby town thinking about closing a library;
I never want to see a day when the only way that words can be read
is strictly and exclusively electronically –
digital books are great, but they will never have the life-span,
or the story and journey, of a physical book,
and that is the way it will always be.

Libraries are islands of tranquility;
books are the legacy of hope, history, tragedy,
that also still carry the story and the DNA of its parent tree;
reading a book is a personal passion for some people,
and to me there is no better place to see the belief
that reading is believing than in paper books,
that are like reading every person who has ever lived’s diary;
and that is why I believe it is everyone’s duty and responsibility
to do all they can to save the libraries.

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My Poem ‘Book Bag’

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I am a writer.
I have always been the one to be seen
with his notebook open
and his pen ready to write in his hand.
I am a reader.
I have always been known to carry around with me
everything I could possibly need,
while I am walking and rediscovering the world,
in my constantly changing holdall and bag.

Wherever I go,
the bag that I have hanging from my shoulder
always has a book or two inside –
I carry around both of my own poetry books,
but I also always have the book that I am currently reading
at the moment with me too,
in case I accidentally, or intentionally,
find myself on a deserted island somewhere,
and I need a good story and compelling characters
in order to get by with and pass the time.

Just recently, right now, and usually,
my “book bag” has inside it:
my poetry notebook,
my books ‘Poet of the Sphere’ and ‘The Sound of Mark,
‘The Drawing of the Three’ by Stephen King,
and Ray Bradbury’s amazing ‘Fahrenheit 451’;
I just love the thought that I always have a place
and a world to go to, within my myself,
or within and under the covers of an incredible book.

I am never too far away from books and stories of every kind,
of varying depths of complexity, passion, language, and adventure;
I always have in my mind, if not in my hand,
tales of people and characters who live and breath
in real and fictional worlds in the past, in another life,
in the optimistic reality of an imagined future.

There are people who don’t read books,
who never even think about what they could possibly find
hidden and waiting for them
within the chapters and story of a classic;
there are some people who use exclamations to describe things,
but who have never felt the thrill of reading a true epic.

There are people who love to read and love stories,
and who read many things, in many ways,
and in this day and age they can do so electronically, anywhere:
books filled with romance, thrills, horror, life, mystery;
I, myself, am a purist –
someone who believes that the experience of holding a book in your hand,
feeling the weight of it, and flicking through the pages,
is part of reading a story that every reader should have;
and even though, in my opinion, I think that anywhere
and in any way creativity can be shared is the best thing ever,
and I am not against sharing art by any means,
I would always choose to have a story read
and ingrained in the paper pages of a soft-cover or a hard-back book –
and that is why I will continue to carry stories of my own,
and of other writers around with me, in my “book bag”.