Riehlife Poem of the Day: Robert Wrigley’s “Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin”

Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin
Poem reprinted from “The Hudson Review,” Vol. LIX, no. 4, Winter, 2007, by permission of Robert Wrigley

Under dust plush as a moth’s wing,
the book’s leather cover still darkly shown,
and everywhere else but this spot was sodden
beneath the roof’s unraveling shingles.
There was that back-of-the-neck lick of chill
and then, from my index finger, the book

opened like a blasted bird. In its box
of familiar and miraculous inks,
a construction of filaments and dust,
thoroughfares of worms, and a silage
of silverfish husks: in the autumn light,
eight hundred pages of perfect wordless lace.