In Front Of The Locked Library Doors Poem by Max Reif

Before the locked
library doors we supplicate,
the scruffy lot of us,

the man with the crazed eyes,
the coyote-hungry man,
the rotund man with the silver beard.

Why do they have to wait
till opening time
to open? Couldn't

they make an exception,
as soon as they come in?

But something
in the make-up of life
stands on such formalities,

lest librarians start rising
earlier and earlier
and the Earth itself
violate its 365-day contract
and fly off into chaos