I'm sitting in the public library, and I'm realizing,
"This is the place where people go
who are the most ordinary
of fantastical sameness."
And this changes into white-walled cinder block,

beauty bent over broken.

And this changes into simple.
And this changes the boring of your
walled perspective of jobs with money;
of kids grown straight out of the suburban air
-like aliens.

And takes you through the dust
of used xerox copy machines
and takes you to the old lady, pissed off
and where is my university?

It's gone;
slipped through my fingers -
ash from the altar
of the angel's incense.

and the hum of the computer,
and the clicking of stranger's fingers,

but paper butterflies hang from the ceiling
and my ordinary gives me the feeling
that they would stoop down,
wings pulsing slowly,
and take me to the Deep Heaven of this place.

Ideas of earth
revolve in my mind
around the sun of a page
and a galaxy of bindings
-the gravity holding things together.

Pages of light
viewed as history.
Time before you
in words insecure
-words under the influence.

And what if I wrapped up this bookstore
and called it the Bible
and what if I took their heads...

and what if I forgot history
and what if I forgot about getting a job
and what if I forgot the praises of men

and what if I saw the over-weight lady next to me
-smile-

and what if believing was right in front of me,
waiting for silence.

And here I love my enemies
and here there is an enemy.
And here the earth looks flat
and here I walk across the water of it
and here I fall off the ends of it.

And there they fall away from gravity
as I turn towards the sun,

I'm floating,
and it consumes me.

From Perelandra by C.S. Lewis:

"When she had at last been made to understand what 'creative' meant she forgot all about the Great Risk and the tragic loneliness and laughed for a whole minute on end."