Grist by Bonnie Proudfoot

Grist

I didn’t know where I was going, but I went along,
because who was out there to keep me from
this adventure, and why shouldn’t we, just to see
if we could? We started at midnight behind a dorm,
headed into a maintenance building, found a dimly lit
concrete stairwell, crossed a semi-flooded hallway
lit only by our flashlights, and another stairwell appeared.
Up we climbed, then slipped through an ancient oak door,
and we were in the back of the rare books collection
in Lockwood Memorial Library, padded leather armchairs,
first editions of Joyce, Steinbeck, folios of Whitman,
Shakespeare, and us, not an alarm or guard in sight. We
touched what we could, left books on couches, then
slipped back downstairs into more tunnels, toward
the student union, the bookstore next door, no doors
locked there, the Norton Anthology, Riverside Shakespeare,
texts I had just bought stacked on shelves, as if
for free, no one to tell us where not to be, what not to see,
and isn’t that what Ram Dass meant by “grist for the mill?”
Someone had a can of spray paint, someone kept guard,
soon flowers and peace signs blossomed on block walls,
and who knows if anyone ever saw those, but for all time,
and for almighty glee, we signed it, nobody, 1972.

*

Bonnie Proudfoot has published fiction, essays, reviews, and poetry in a variety of journals and anthologies. Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her debut novel, Goshen Road, (Swallow Press) was named 2022 WCONA Book of the Year and was long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway. Her first chapbook of poems (Household Gods, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) was released in September 2022. She lives on a ridgetop outside of Athens, Ohio, with her songwriter husband, Dan Canterbury. To find out more about Bonnie, check her website: bonnieproudfoot.com