Don’t think about the book,
but only the bookstore owner,
his or her superlative torpor
or maybe intransigence, that refusal
to serve the mercurial goddesses
of poetic whim and commerce.
Or, better, his or her belief in miracles,
that love comes
even if very late, even if the store is about
to shut and that last customer
standing, my God, in the Poetry section
reaches up for that book with the grey cover,
opens it, reads the first poem and when the owner says,
“We are closing,” closes the book, turns towards
the counter, book still in hand,
the other hand moving towards the pocket, to the cash
that will release finally all the benighted history
of that slim grey book.
Howard Levy has just come out with a new collection of poems, “Dreams & Maldreams.” He lives in Amagansett.