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

Leuven, Belgium