We are at the end of National Storytelling Week 2016 and today (6th February) is National Libraries Day 2016. #librariesday
The following poem seemed like an apt celebration of both.
Storytime
Miss Fairbairn read The Odyssey every Friday afternoon,
Keeping a class of thirty, usually squirming, six years olds
In rapt silence for an hour.
The two thousand year old tales of a Greek warrior,
Closed the week, with the promise of more to come.
We braved the lure of the sirens,
Shook to the terror of the cyclops,
Steered that narrow course between Scylla and Charybdis,
All the way to Ithaca
Into the arms of the patient Penelope.
Fifty years on one can reflect,
Perhaps Penelope waited too long,
Odysseus was, at best, a flawed hero.
Two thousand years from now
How will our failings be deconstructed,
Analysed and reassembled?
Without those Friday afternoons
How much of this would have mattered?
Should it matter now?
Yet still, somehow, it does.
Steve Bishop
valparaisobooks 