Columns

They are simple, these columns.
White. Stone. Still straight and strong
after millennia. We gawk at them
like the tourists, amazed somehow
that something so old not only exists,
but functions, that their beauty has the strength
that their newer cousins, so full of flash
and seduction, lack.

And this is why we come to them
when our own walls collapse,
why the ancient books still hold sway
in a world distracted by changes at the speed of electrons.
For some things are eternal.
Not columns perhaps, despite their seeming so,
but love, compassion, the simple pleasures
that seem so ephemeral, and yet
live on beyond life itself.

About this poem

I have a bookshelf of self-help books. Yep, I am self-help junkie. But truth be told, when I struggle with things, I generally turn to the bible. Too often, I think, we chase after new answers, when the ancient ones are sitting right in front of us. There’s a reason these have endured.

From that thought, this poem.

Tom