Books contain communication and we earnestly wish for one another, for company, for acknowledgement, for a friend’s tender hand during night and storm; open, close them, rest on the desk, on the floor, in stacks and on the long shelves a lifetime could not encompass; I know Rome, there, and toss a book as a Frisbee here is Paris discussed; the young and some peppered others, heads bent, read and read hard, some at war and some for fun; learning, and I’d love to capitalize that, knowledge the same; on the fourth floor with cubicle stations and broad tables and papers spread about, pen a nervous flickers, behind glass where talking is encouraged and trigonometry finds its way to a blackboard, professors communicate dropped classes and access codes; books in this building, a large container for the bound containment, somehow a binding that sets us free, or, depending on circumstance or interpretation, weighs down upon us because it’s forced; not this one: I spin in the opposite direction, always, it is enlightenment and pleasure; drinks contained under lids are fine but not food; here we eat of other things, like the liquid food of a Samaritan, or Italian pilgrim on his mountain climb; here primarily a secular vision, humanist, a way of looking; shelves between the tall mountains and the sea, briefcase wireless internet laptop pigtail tennis shoe flip-flop pants baggy or tight, squeezing the fleshy container into which we pour our fine communion.
