2011-03-19 - 9:31 p.m.
Ode to the card catalog
Form followed function
15 or 60 stomachs
digest information
in the alphabetical order
Rods running through your drawers labeled "Trouble to Twentieth Century"
A single hole in every card
So nobody will steal
the hard work
Contents, typed out
one key, then another depression
each card, individual
and considerably non-recreational
The library is/ is not a
Titillating place to be,
So many of the best minds
stayed there.
Each card, leads to something else
Yet, It all started with that altar,
that shining hearth
in the center of every library
And now, card catolog
your 15 drawers are not needed
like the passe record player
or the un-upgradeable grandfather clock
But these old things bespeak
quieter times, less pressured days
When a man could walk out of the
local high school, and into a living
Purchasing wooden,
strictly mechanical things
A little boring but no broken plastic
or disappearance space either
the things were there, hard to break,
and hard to move too.
So now, I can't still fix carbon
but the vestigial restlessness
threaded back in, spurred by plastics,
newly alit by digital things
Newly nomadic, headed in loops,
somewhat transfixed,
both everywhere and nowhere
