LOTR stuff to throw away

On throwing away an old copy of “The Lord of the Rings.”

One Volume, paperback
with spine of yellowed sellotape
Corners folded into cabbage leaves
Not dog-ears unless in some dreadful fight
Too tattered for the Shops
Of Charity to take and sell
Redundant on new overstocked shelves
Replaced by illustrated, Alan Lee’s.

I turn it over in my hand and see
The price that tells a story of its own
Pence and shillings for a thousand
Pages of delights and daydreams.
For half a lifetime lost in lands
Whose air I’ll never breathe.

Appendices shift and flutter to the floor
Aragorn strides out for the final time
Into the black pit and the fellowship’s
Doom without return.