Selecting A Reader

a striking title she stops flipping her painted nail edges onto the page the fan tries to turn over the clouds, the smoke trail, swirl, twirl, her city heart calms to country words a brook in deep jungle crystal clear water treking, swishing, tinkling, through a landscape she wishes to be a part a hypnotic song soothing a loneliness a disturbed soul below the big Ssh in the bookstore the silent brook does its job outside the city buzzes with traffic well, it is time to take a holiday she tells herself and plonk the book goes back to the shelf she swirls past the counter and slowly walks out like a jungle brook her bracelets tinkling the bookstore as calm as she has come inspired by Selecting A Reader First, I would have her be beautiful, and walking carefully up on my poetry at the loneliest moment of an afternoon, her hair still damp at the neck from washing it. She should be wearing a raincoat, an old one, dirty from not having money enough for the cleaners. She will take out her glasses, and there in the bookstore, she will thumb over my poems, then put the book back up on its shelf. She will say to herself, 'For that kind of money, I can get my raincoat cleaned.' And she will. Ted Kooser