Reading List
Later on, after the dishwasher is filled,
dog walked, mail posted, magazines sorted,
bed/some semblance of sense/a few calls made:
………………………….doctor, chimney guy, Blue Cross Blue Shield
I’ll free up a spare moment to add
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt to the list
of books read I’ve kept these past few years
a satisfying snap for every entry
like biting down on a marrow bone like
………………………….breaking a seized nut with an offset wrench.
I will resist the urge to record my
college textbooks, titles long forgotten
save for orphaned words such as Issues and
Contemporary. I won’t include those
T.V. Guides with their Byzantine layout
and Lilliput font or the stack of Hardy
adventures wolfed down like salty snacks.
………………………….Christ the Readers Digests’ alone would
require their own special section,
back issues from 1961
moldering swollen during those sultry
Tennessee summers, a sage piece by
Art Linkletter or Laughter Is The Best
Medicine to while away the still
afternoon’s, relieved only by the bleat
of the front porch swing and the X-ray buzz
of cicadas.
………………………….Maybe the laundry and the fallen leaves
won’t mind if I take five minutes to add
Franklin E. Meyer’s Me and Caleb and
The Borrowers, by Mary Norton
reminding me, how could I forget? of
E.B. White, Mark Twain and Marvel Comics
not to mention countless cereal
boxes, album jackets and the liner
notes concealed within. But reading the dogs
face, a forlorn sphinx haunting an empty
bowl, I think I’d best add her name first
………………………….hoping to avoid a bloody awful
savaging when she writes her memoirs.
.
by Dave Hardin
from Scrum, December 2013