Record-Keeping
A new page
A blank slate
Shall I say it,
Tabula rasa
So my college wasn’t wasted
It isn’t real
And it is
There’s no paper
Or a quill
No bowl of ink for a brush
To make
Beautiful Japanese characters
No illuminated manuscript
With notes in the margin
A mischief illustration
Of a supervisor of a monk
In the scriptorum
No cutting into tablets
Made of Sumerian stone
Etching marks into the rock
We still try to decipher
Who were the scribes,
Who are they now?
Who keeps the records now
Seeds in a depository
To the north
The banks, the potential
All the things we were
And might be
Even better
The phonograph
The library
Keepers
Whose work we can enjoy
From the originals
I have a card
I have a flash drive
I believe in what was
Revel in it now
That’s for today
Tomorrow there’s a plan
Well, enough of one
For jazz
C L Couch
Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash
clcouch123 
May 21, 2019 at 10:22 pm
The wondering why there are no traces of more advanced civilizations. They erased themselves through advanced technology and achieving a small “footprint” on their space. ???
May 23, 2019 at 2:49 am
Sure, that makes sense. We keep talking about the small footprint as an ideal way to live. Which will make them hard to find. Good for them, ironic for us.