It is comforting

It is comforting to think there are academics walking along leaf strewn paths in the fall
thinking deeply about something, their collars popped up against the sharp breeze,
hands in pockets, moving among old, brick buildings that ring out the time,
brows furrowed with the imprint of hours of ideas foundering, collapsing, springing up,
molded hot, slowly solidifying, only to be pounded out again and again.

It is comforting to know knowledge and ideas are held in these people and their libraries,
silently wafting into the world in ways unseen.

If you study technology, surely we can see the result--
cars, shoes, blenders, spiral notebooks, Gatorade.
But thoughts, new perspectives, these are as diffuse as light itself,
intensified by academies as a beacon, though not as useful as our own star.

Perhaps the comfort is in knowing that what humans are is inside,
and there are those who can speak about the gadgets with words of caution and wisdom.
They do the work, write a book, and share what they know, some distilled version of it, with the rest of us,
perhaps opening a crack in our mistified, crusted brains of monotonous labor.

Walk, think, occupy old brick buildings, lecture in musty rooms, and keep artifacts in windowless studies,
then release all that work like a balloon that lifts us up into thin places.