Library Liturgy

By Caroline Liberatore

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O Gracious and Intimate Author of Life, 
I implore that you would meet me in this atheneum
brimming with anthologies and fictional soliloquies,
each whispering weathered truths and abiding beauties.
I am easily captivated by these artifacts, 
I’ve known and tasted their merits. 

Help me to ascribe this same poetical reverence to the Magnum Opus of Your Creation: 
the ever-written epics of Your people. 
That in each individual I greet and assist, 
I would be stunned by aspects of Your image within each compositional entity. 

As I persist in the seemingly mundane commission of
cataloging, circulating, collocating materials, prod me to
recognize the distinct privilege of being the dispatcher of
​provoked thoughts and use of one's time. 

Let me not undervalue this 
quiet, consistent work 
or patrons' familiar faces and cadences. 

It is only with the knowledge 
of your poetic, purposed nature 
that I may not take for granted 
my role within this specific volume 
of Your succinct, subtle, and divine fairytale.

---

Caroline Liberatore is a poet from Cleveland, Ohio. She has also been published in Ekstasis Magazine and Ashbelt Journal.

'Library Liturgy' was written as a result of the supposed tension between one's job and communion with God. 'Perhaps they intersect more than we realize,' Caroline says. 'It was also my take on everyday liturgy, as is found in [the book] Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvy.'