By Molly Hotson
I wrote this poem in the hopes that I would be able to effectively relay my personal experience and journey thus far with the Atwater Library. To me, the Atwater Library’s identity is everchanging. Beginning as the Mechanic’s Institute of Montreal, the library has now developed into a centre designed to bring the community together through education and outreach. The more I learned about the Atwater Library, the more I realized that it was impossible to describe the library in just a few words. And so, this poem was born.
You hear that?
That is the sound of something rather extraordinary.
Something that has breathed for a hundred years.
Seas, mountains of words
That have been spoken
have been gazed upon
consumed
ingested.
here.
If you sit still enough,
you CAN feel them.
Years and Years
of people
subjects
opinions, and thoughts
gracefully flickering in the air,
and off lingering spirits tongues.
Founded upon the grounds of determination
and the desire to change the world
If you close your eyes,
You can almost touch the stories
the fight to understand
to gain insight
to share what is true.
You can almost feel the saturation
of energy
left from creative bursts
and passionate pleas.
If you listen hard enough,
You can almost hear the child
who tentatively listens to the story of the man in the moon
the engineer, who struggles to grasp that concept, just out of their reach
the young reader, who is determined to conquer
one last page.
The elderly man, who simply wants to speak the language of the internet
the refugee, who seeks the peacefulness that she can call home, for just a while longer.
The youth, who simply desires that their story be heard, reverberated through the ages to the young
and
the girl
the girl who wants so desperately to consume the character of this gifted space into
one,
concrete
word.
But.
perhaps she needs not one word
but a chorus full
an orchestra of thought
to capture this pulsing space
The
Atwater
Library
What story shall you tell together?