Father Sebastian

Father Sebastian leans forward
in his leather chair,
hands folded neatly,
eyes bright blue explosions.
He points out the window,
beyond his campus office,
where two men in overalls trowel mortar,
wedge bricks in rows and columns.
"That wall will live beyond them," he says,
"something solid, tangible, something
their children can point to and say,
our fathers lived."

Along the office wall are bookcases,
upper shelves packed with volumes
ranging from Plato to Sartre,
and below, the rows and columns
of his own work --
books, papers, journals, monographs,
each tightly bound,
mortared with glue.

Scott Speck
01/03/2000