Reveries of libraries, the tenth : TOP POCKET

Philip Harvey

A finger prompts the next page and having touched, moves the screen sideways.

It is the library in my top pocket.

Reference seems a breeze, but most text turns ludicrously self-referential.

Hard to recall when it started, the screen.

My eyes would run around the rectangle, insofar as eyes can run.

Eyes were not made to run and some of those screen movies are marathons.

Tears form from tiny print, not from a dazzling star-crossed storyline.

It is the library in my top pocket.

Shelf life of this gadget of the ages depends on my powers of interest, though even then it may be a fact machine and little more.

Facts are what test us 95% of the time on a utilitarian day.

Youtubers spread like the day of the triffids, all under a sliver of plate glass.

The slide shows of childhood had the virtue of fixedness.

Instead I walk into a building.

The structure completely surrounding me with information and romance, which convention calls the library, looks like something out of the future.

The present is where I take my eyes for a run after I have rescued them from my top pocket.

But the library is something out of the future, rather than the past.

Its windows are designed to provide a world of words, they glow with belief.

The library has taken on height, turned into a big 3-D version of the things on my pocket screen.

It is bigger than sensaround, I can walk into it with my eyes open like some baroque installation, the library.

This place is top drawer.

I must tell someone, I must explain how knowledge is the size of the human face.

The moving finger writes and having texted, picks down a book from the shelf.

My eyes run around the room until they find their rest on opened pages of print.

The mystics have moved on from here.

But their words are given respectful space across broad white pages, with more besides waiting for rediscovery down the shelf.

More than tearful types under micro-glass.

This building has been planned for people to spend hours of reading time, top drawer.

Weather is what happens 95% of the time on a wet day.

Throb in my top pocket brings me back to the present, it’s home asking me when is dinner.

Someone is moving the door sideways and I notice it’s closing time.