Question For A Window Gazer

In the barbershop I often walked past I used to see fantasy books through the window Sword-bearing elves and chimerical beasts on the covers GAME OF THRONES, LAST UNICORN and ELF QUEEN OF SHANNARA They were tossed onto the barber's personal shelf Next to a row of hair-cream bottles Every month a different grouping of titles I sometimes saw the barber between haircuts Reading in one of his customer chairs I have been in and out of town so often I can't pin down when the difference happened No more change in that grouping of books Four or five leaning, two of them flat Picture of a colorful castle, fading in the sun Always at that same left-behind angle The barber on slow afternoons, sitting in his chair No reading matter in his hands It's been at least two years now It must have been sometime after September 11th When some equally wrenching impact In the sphere of his personal life Must have cut the threads to his fond imaginings Put an end to his fantasy-reading hobby I have no interest in his cloud-capped towers It's something I passed on the way to a coffee shop But I wonder—what made him stop? And last week, the second week of September My roving eye registered a new question mark In the window, next to that old group of books For the first time, a cover in black and white A news photo of people gesturing tensely