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. 

Invisible man

A Ruinous Thirst

Arvi’s black mutt-his misdirected bark,

gaze off target, vague, somewhere to my right

was the first clue, one of only two mind

you, there’d been no need for a third even

at my age, too old to feel so light on

my feet, young enough to notice I no

longer cast a shadow on the sidewalk;

Troublesome? sure, but I shake it off and

press on down the leafy street side-stepping

a meteor shower of furtive black

squirrels Un-Dog-Like, unable to detect

my presence not unlike the approaching

runner, a young woman, jaw set in sheer

determination her mouth turned down at

the corners left eyebrow arched ever so

slightly; vivid details I would have missed

had I not paced her for a block or two,

our four feet slapping in unison if

only for a moment, long enough to

Understand this new found transparency

did nothing to extend my flagging verve

leaving me bent and planted in the street

gulping great lung-fulls, hands on knees, awash

suddenly with ennui, come to grips with

the foolishness of impunity:  filched

candy bars, levitated hats, eavesdropped

private conversations, aware at last

of a ruinous thirst that leads me to

a garden hose attached to a nearby

house noticing too late the boys on bikes

agape at the long green charmed snake bubbling

in the driveway, marching wet prints in quick

succession trailing off down the street round

the corner to the front door that appears

to swing open of its own volition

up the stairs to the bathroom where I stand

for hours before the mirror, blue toothbrush

flitting to and fro like a furious

sparrow, awaiting my reappearance.