A New Voice...

While visiting my Grandmother this weekend in rural South Carolina, I read the Sunday newspaper as I always do. In the Florence Morning-News every Sunday is a column entitled "American Life in Poetry." Many of you may be familiar with this weekly section. The weekly poem was based on losing someone during the national and personal tragedy of September 11, 2001. Entitled "Prayer for the Dead," Stuart Kestenbaum's poem is a lament to the transitional nature of our existence and a somber reminder we must try very hard to live in the moment and accept everything which stands before us.

The text:

Prayer for the Dead

The light snow started late last night and continued
all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally
enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother
was alive again and possessing the beauty of youth, aware
that he would be leaving again shortly and that is the lesson
of the snow falling and of the seeds of death that are in everything
that is born: we are here for a moment
of a story that is longer than all of us and few of us
remember, the wind is blowing out of someplace
we don’t know, and each moment contains rhythms
within rhythms, and if you discover some old piece
of your own writing, or an old photograph,
you may not remember that it was you and even if it was once you,
it’s not you now, not this moment that the synapses fire
and your hands move to cover your face in a gesture
of grief and remembrance.

End.

Yes, "the wind is blowing out of someplace we don't know." We all believe we know so much about our world when in fact, we know nothing. As brief events in universal existence we are resigned to living day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. We must cherish our families, friends and human existence. This poem is a prayer to the dead, yes, but also a prayer to the rest of our lives.

Librarians are the gatekeepers of our existence. Librarians should carefully and proudly understand that people come and go, are birthed and die, but knowledge is the only true thing we can pass on to future generations. Whatever meaning we apply to the universe as a human species in held in our repositories of information. May the poem above be a simple and profound reminder without our profession the universe is colder than it ever could possibly be.

That being said, welcome to my blog. I hope you enjoy my musings and philosophy on libraries, life and everything in between.