Library Blues

Loitering in a public library this rainy afternoon, courting inspiration, subjects come to mind but are more suitable as essay than as poem. All usual activities occur -- visitors come, visitors go -- a typical afternoon flow of many who, unlike me, may have no other place to go. My empty house -- comfortable, dry -- far from bare, has a large flat-screen TV: it reports the news and offers any other sort of program that I choose. The fridge is stocked, coffee brewed, the doors unlocked. But now no neighbors come. My cell phone mutely occupies an empty pocket. A need for others' presence does confirm I am a social animal unsuited to prolonged separations. Library visits provide assurance a possibility exists for contact -- to know and to be known -- to extend, or to grasp, a hand in friendship. Even, perhaps, for mutual spoken, or unspoken, communication. Why, then, do I often leave discouraged, without having said aloud even a single word?