Some flash-fiction for those of us addicted to the written word, where there is imagination always at the ready, a fearless illumination void of boredom’s darkness. (Image by Janice Dick)
Light Never Dimming
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 someday partake,
becoming pages of existence,
perhaps even of sage significance,
where quintessential legacies remain forever awake,
never without light to share with others.
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I would spend hours, finding nothing for my research, but once in a while finding gems to read, instead. Way off topic but way fun to read. In a way, I miss that serendipity. The onslaught of things I see on my browsers all have a ax to grind and are not serendipity, but well-planned promotion. I have to do careful searches for what I seek, and generally not finding the kind of off-topic rewards the dusty shelves of the library provided me.
I have looked at the oldest book in my library of books that are mostly hand-me-down volumes. It is a book of sermons in England in 1771. Upon reading some of the text, one would think that the congregation was filled with deviant behavior, possessed of the devil, and fornicating with him. The language, if you can read it the way the Ss are so much larger in the font, you will find that the Episcopal priest would be giving a tongue lashing to all of the flock that came on Sunday to hear such castigation of their many, many sins. If I had been a church member at that time, I would feel like I was in a straitjacket under the power of the Church of England.
No wonder so many fled to the New World and some even brought that book of sermons with them to lash at the natives for their heathen, dirty sinful lives.
Ron