Bookstore Poem

//bookstore poem

We love books
and need to go
to bookstores
whether we’re on the net,
in our home town,
or in a hotel
in Mendocino or Joliet.
After touching base with a bookstore,
a new novel in hand,
we feel rich, like we’re sitting
on a comfortable chair
in a cozy, lamplit room
with a crackling fire
while twigs scratch eerily
on mullioned windows
in the foggy gloom,
even if we’re in
a rent-a-tent
in Yosemite
reading by
a Coleman lamp.

When roaming
aisles of books,
or seeing old friends
like Grisham and Austen
we are as confident walking about
as salmon leaping upstream.
It’s like finding a
treasure chest, and we
anticipate reading cozily,
which adds to the bookstore’s
nurturing air. We don’t feel
like strangers there,
usually buy
some new, must-have
book to add to the bunch
we own as if we have time
to do nothing but read for a month.