Light Never Dimming
by Odin Roark

A library has no “after hours,”
that time when life on pages slumber
or their covers vault-shut.

How rewarding it must be,
paginate existence forever alive
shedding light for itself and others,
a perpetual awakening state
to what once was,
and still sustained by paper,
binary code and digital deliverance.

Philosophy’s rumination of death
fills shelf after shelf, stack after stack,
chronicling sages condemned to exile,
imprisonment or death by many means,
all for asking others consider questions
in search of answers.

Pale faces of righteous judges pronounce sentence,
carry out much unjust condemning,
imbue our eyes with lasting life
that leaps from vibrant pages,
reminding us we do not exist yet.

We wonder whether on his final night of existence,
Socrates heard evening birds
as he considered the hemlock,
or were they too of quiet voice,
feathers in reverent repose,
sorrow hidden in winged hush.

How vast, dense and black
such a pre-sunrise must have been
as he prepared to drink from the cup
the means to lift his weight-burdened body
back to the darkness from where he came,
from the realm we were as yet but a non-thought.

How rewarding…

Deriving living pictures from yesterday’s ink,
coming face to face with wisdom’s slumped back,
the prophetic eyes closing,
the finding of ourselves thinking ahead
to future libraries where huddled masses
might pour through yesterdays,
not knowing which of life’s endings
they might some day partake,
becoming pages of existence,
perhaps even of sage significance,
where quintessential legacies remain forever awake,
never without light to share with others.