Nine muses attend the burning
of creation. Sing they.
Songs of sadness. Flames
fill the night.
Smoke carries the knowledge of Ptolemy across the sky.
Fire
from Caesar’s burning fleet*
ignites the home of Euclid and Heron.

Words that knew the world reduced to embers.

I walked into life's library to seek perhaps adventures there.
Not really knowing what I sought my expectations unaware.

I looked first at the non-fiction upon shelves marked clearly with tape.
The more I looked yet did I realize it was from that I sought escape.

I chanced upon a section where great imagined dramas did abound.
Where mystic stories and strange creatures on the pages could be found.

Caught briefly by the imagined on the pages with heroes deeds upon.
I realized all was fantasy so through the pathway of books I ventured on.

Time passed as it tends by some scale that seemed so erratic in its flow.
As shelves and stories passed me by along the route I chose to go.

I came then to a section with a long queue of people standing there.
Patiently in their place and each with determined and focused stare.

What was it that drew them and caused this lengthened line?
Their looks suggested that the need, was very much like mine.

I had passed so many shelves with random people here and there.
But no other shelf or section for which this queue I could compare.

Through strong and strange compulsion I resolved to take my chance.
To join the much sought after line toward the shelf of "Love and Romance".

Surely, though our story is to be found amongst the rooms and walls and shelves  within the library of Babel...

Each letter perfectly paired to the next, and every space in its rightful place.
Periods and commas punctuating every moment exactly as they should.

...That room has yet to be illuminated, The walls therein unseen, It’s shelves have been left unenumerated.
And the book is yet unnamed...

Lost is the certainty,
the written account,
existing within the infinite possibilities of algorithmic and mathematical clout.

...Leaving us to marvel and worry only armed with faith and good reason, through all of life’s seasons and its many unmeasurable miserable doubts.

I went to the library
and gathered flowers from its garden
to leave in the cement vases
of forgotten soldiers monuments
that they keep
in their front yard.
in that moment,
i felt alive.
it was raining.




it keeps raining.