The Bookstall by Linda Pastan

 

Just looking at them

I grow greedy, as if they were

freshly baked loaves

waiting on their shelves

to be broken open—that one

and that—and I make my choice

in a mood of exalted luck,

browsing among them

like a cow in sweetest pasture.

For life is continuous

as long as they wait

to be read—these inked paths

opening into the future, page

after page, every book

its own receding horizon.

And I hold them, one in each hand,

a curious ballast weighting me

here to the earth.