Poem: "A Never Failing Spring"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem is spillover from the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from readera. It also fills the "Do What You Love" square in my 2-1-26 card for the Valentines Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by janetmiles. It belongs to the Kraken thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows "But an Empty Shell," "Beautiful, Damn Hard, Increasingly Useful," and "Filled with Things You Don't Know" ($49) so read at least the first two or this won't make as much sense.


"A Never Failing Spring"

[Saturday, April 12, 2014]

Kemp felt grateful that
Marjane had moved to
a library ship and brought
many new books with her.

However, he still regretted
the unfortunate situation
in Jackass Hamlet and
Lost Notch Reservation.

So he gathered a group
of Kraken teens who loved
working with their hands,
furnished some materials,
and set them to building
Little Free Libraries.

One had a box of
succulents on the roof,
ideal for desert conditions.

Another one looked like
a clock tower, which included
an upper cabinet for adults
and a lower one for children.

A different model was designed
to sit on top of a wooden fence.

Kemp and the teens scattered
the Little Free Libraries around
Jackass Hamlet so that everyone
would have a chance to read, and
filled them with books for all ages.

Lost Notch was a little more difficult,
but a couple of elders there granted
permission to put Little Free Libraries
in their yards, so that was a start.

Kemp managed to find a few books
in Apache or other tribal languages.

The rest of the space he filled with
books about Nevada, wildlife,
wilderness skills, and so on.

Each Little Free Library
bore a plaque that read,
A library outranks any other
one thing a community can
do to benefit its people. It is
a never failing spring in the desert.

* * *

Notes:

"A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert."
-- Andrew Carnegie

Jackass Hamlet is a small town in Nevada, between the tiny Lost Notch Reservation and U.S. Route 95. It was settled by people from Jackass Flats, an alluvial basin to the northwest. The public school system and other institutions cover both the residents of the town and those of the reservation.

Nevada Reservations (in salmon pink)
T-Nevada includes the tiny Lost Notch Reservation between the Nevada Test Site and the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. It is a crappy piece of land that borders a toxic waste dump on the Nevada Test Site side. The government begrudges every penny spent on the reservation, so it has even fewer resources than average. This is where Skink grew up with his mother. It is home to people descended from the scattered remnants of several Apache bands, and actually started out as a prison camp.

Most Apache reservations are in Arizona or New Mexico.

Nevada Counties Map

Little Free Library Plans
 

Comments

Excellent

[dialecticdreamer]

This will make people THINK about why the old librarian left, and maybe, they'll ask questions instead of assuming that it was another white person bailing on them.

Re: Excellent

[ysabetwordsmith]

Given her personality, I expect she told people why she had to leave.