Afternoon Among the Stacks

The silence of the library
Slides loose among the bookshelves and slithers through
row after row of theology and psychology
waiting patiently for us to open their brown
ageing papers, and soak up their wisdom.

Last week, I opened one and its Greek letters
gave me no insight into the words of Jesus
that had come alive in the sermon I was writing.
He was alive, and yet the Greek symbols and the seventeenth
century analysis of a translation left me
cold.

I went back to my textbook, family systems and disagreements with
Freud, Jungian analysis and human validation process
seemed a bit more real,
coming alive when I thought about the family this morning
in a courtroom filled with the last hour of Vern
and how his caretaker had stolen his lawnmower
and his wife’s blue china.

My Starbucks drained, my e-mail checked, my Facebook updated,
and my watch telling me its time to go to class
and be challenged to put all of this into words
everyone else will understand.

10/01/09