Latin

by Michael Estabrook

The conversation comes up
all the damn time:
who needs books
when we have the Internet.
Books take up space,
collect dust, pages yellow, paperbacks fall apart,
they end up in boxes in the attic or beneath the stairs.
You don’t look things up
in books anymore. A few keystrokes
or a shout out to Alexa
and you have your answer!
So who needs books anyway?
Me. I do. Why?
Explanation by way of analogy:
40 years back in grad school a student says
to the professor, Latin’s a dead language
so why do we bother learning it?
The prof, staring with that
what–are–you–an–idiot look on his face says
“Because intelligent people learn Latin, that’s why.”