So many books

Reading List

Later on, after the dishwasher is filled,

dog walked, mail posted, magazines sorted,

bed/some semblance of sense/a few calls made:

doctor, chimney guy, Blue Cross Blue Shield

I’ll free up a spare moment to add

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt to the list

of books read I’ve kept these past few years

a satisfying snap for every entry

like biting down on a marrow bone like

breaking a seized nut with an offset wrench.

I will resist the urge to record my

college textbooks, titles long forgotten

save for orphaned words such as Issues and

Contemporary.  I won’t include those

T.V. Guides with their Byzantine layout

and Lilliput font or the stack of Hardy

adventures wolfed down like salty snacks. 

Christ the Readers Digests’ alone would

require their own special section,

back issues from 1961

moldering swollen during those sultry

Tennessee summers, a sage piece by

Art Linkletter or Laughter Is The Best

Medicine to while away the still

afternoon’s, relieved only by the bleat

of the front porch swing and the X-ray buzz

of cicadas. 

Maybe the laundry and the fallen leaves

won’t mind if I take five minutes to add

Franklin E. Meyer’s Me and Caleb and

The Borrowers, by Mary Norton

reminding me, how could I forget? of

E.B. White, Mark Twain and Marvel Comics  

not to mention countless cereal

boxes, album jackets and the liner

notes concealed within.  But reading the dogs

face, a forlorn sphinx haunting an empty

bowl, I think I’d best add her name first

hoping to avoid a bloody awful

savaging when she writes her memoirs.