Booklice Poem by Paul Lester

These creatures never need to read
To be intimate with literature.

Harmless enough in their way,
They make little nervous jumps over sentences.

For them paper mould holds more interest than words.
They'd rather argue over a particle of glue
Than the sense of a text.

Their interests lie on the soiled surface of the page
They punctuate merely by their presence.

In essence booklice are tiny cattle
That will graze on the pages of a book
Long after anyone else has ceased to care or to look.