I Want To Live For Something. I

It Meant That She Belonged Some Place. She Was A Brooklyn Girl With A Brooklyn Name And A Brooklyn Accent. She Didn't Want To Change Into A Bit Of This And A Bit Of That.

You Took A Walk On A Sunday Afternoon And Came To A Nice Neighborhood, Very Refined. You Saw A Small One Of These Trees Through The Iron Gate Leading To Someone's Yard And You Knew That Soon That Section Of Brooklyn Would Get To Be A Tenement District. The Tree Knew. It Came There First. Afterwards, Poor Foreigners Seeped In And The Quiet Old Brownstone Houses Were Hacked Up Into Flats, Feather Beds Were Pushed Out On The Window Sills To Air And The Tree Of Heaven Flourished. That Was The Kind Of Tree It Was. It Liked Poor People.

There Had To Be Dark And Muddy Waters So That The Sun Could Have Something To Background It's Flashing Glory.

From That Time On, The World Was Hers For The Reading. She Would Never Be Lonely Again, Never Miss The Lack Of Intimate Friends. Books Became Her Friends And There Was One For Every Mood.

She Went Out And Took A Last Long Look At The Shabby Little Library. She Knew She Would Never See It Again. Eyes Changed After They Looked At New Things. If In The Years To Be She Were To Come Back, Her New Eyes Might Make Everything Seem Different From The Way She Saw It Now. The Way It Was Now Was The Way She Wanted To Remember It.