The Sunday paper came just now. <br />I dove right past the thick, black headlines <br /> <br />in a frenzied quest for the Book Section, <br />shrinking year by year and hidden <br />so far inside the folded mass, it can take <br />a couple passes to find it. <br /> <br />I prefer to encounter my world <br />as it appears when packaged <br />between covers. <br /> <br />Instead of bloody battlefields, <br />maybe some anecdotal <br />survey of the history of war, or armaments, <br />or even fashions in uniforms — <br /> <br />or something tracing <br />the rise and fall of empires, <br />bestowing a sense of pattern, <br />of the broad sweep of time <br />without the threat that time itself <br />will be swept out <br />from under all our feet. <br /> <br />Instead of tracts describing <br />the ongoing clashes between nations, <br />the scandals within institutions, <br />I like to read of short stories <br />about the everyday <br />people who make up <br />those nations and institutions. <br /> <br />Somehow, the discomfiting <br />disasters of the thick, black headlines, <br />trailing their dark clouds of smoke, <br /> <br />have been refined away, <br />siphoned off —<i>civilized</i>, when seen <br />through this lens. In my leisure, <br />I survey the hidden <br />life behind 'events', and find <br /> <br />it goes quite well <br />with a good cup of coffee. <br /> <br /> <br />(.....july23)<br /><br />Max Reif<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bibliophilia/
