"Librarian" by M.N. Hanson

Our next contribution to the 2017 Community Poetry Blog comes from M.N. Hanson. Thanks & keep those submissions coming!

Librarian

M. N. Hanson, October 2017

Conservator of your culture and curator of your lore,

I collect and archive ev’ry fragment of you:

Mythical, physical, and metaphysical.

In creation stories, your fertile touch

Aroused the first dawn, and every morning since then

You descend, radiant and calm, appearing:

On rooftops. On billboards,

balconies, and south side rail yards.

In tree limbs and in bank clocks,

Water stains.

Toasted bread.

The grain in a wood bar stool.

All revel in these miracles and make show of praise,

for you are unrestrained and unrefined.

Unbridled is your seeing eye!

Only the dissident and the undone suffer under your absence.

Only the most vigorous and vital inherit the world.

All that is has become tender, to which thou shalt devote thyself.

The archive reflects these truths

for the future of our species.

For the mental and spiritual health of mankind.

I was chosen because I have no faith.

I will not pause in gathering evidence.

Thus, I am your perfect, most devoted librarian;

It is only because I have no faith that I waste no time.

As you cultivate nature, I harvest testament.

Interpretation, we leave for the scholars.