In the used bookstore at lunch escaping my work computer loaded with musts and shoulds, I am conscious how I stick out among the jean clad students cramming and the time-served retirees relaxing. Students slouch over tables their coffee mugs steaming industriously. Two older-than-me women hold down the wing chairs in the window, displaying leisure. One holds a pink highlighter uncapped and clamped between her index finger and thumb, cocked and ready to mark the noteworthy on the page in front of her. Her cup is not steaming. She sips anyway.
In the poetry section I realize how difficult it is to bend sideways and genuflect in a tight red skirt as I try to read the titles of skinny books of poetry, poor refugees squeezed between their fat anthologized neighbours; how my high-heeled boots click-clack across hardwood boards once blond now worn in spots to grey; how my chair clunks as I pull it out all eyes burrowing deeper between the covers; how I dip Darjeeling tea wrapped in a small sack tied with a string, a hobo satchel held by an exiled office worker looking for a place in a different cliche; how a whiff of perfume rises when I lift off my coat but does not mask the scent of dust stuck between pages and floating champagne-like and atmospheric when released.
I stay, steeping, keeping still while the dust settles around me, reading two treasures found: Billy Collins Nine Horses and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Incredible Good Fortune. Still, lucky me here among words and readers for a short time, away from musts and shoulds.
The poetry in your own words is a treasure in itself ….
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I was half thinking this should have been a poem. Thanks, O.
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I like it how you open the door for us to see it all, and “Incredible Good Fortune” as a title. Since it truly is.
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It was one of those pockets of time when the stars aligned – books, writing, blogging, and poetry. A lucky convergence.
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Your writing tickles me Susanne starts my morning off with a smile!
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Then I am having a good day, JB.
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Browsing my wordpress reader, away–conjunctively–from ands and yets.
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We seem to have contracted conjuntivitis!
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I wonder if the musts and shoulds ever completely go away….they do seem to grow more pale with time.
It’s very kind of you to take refugees like Ursula and Billy to lunch. (Even his great popular reception and his stint as our national Poet Laureate couldn’t have brought much in the way of filthy lucre to the latter.) Nice idea…a used-book store with wing-backed chairs and tea….
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If you lived here I would invite you to have tea with me at The Black Squirrel, the name of the bookstore. I find this funny because I really, really dislike squirrels but this bookstore is a real gem. I couldn’t believe I found Billy and Ursula wedged between the big anthologies just waiting for me!
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I must remember not to wear a tight red skirt when I go into a book shop. Very evocative writing as always, Sue.
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Oh golly, I am sputtering at the image of you in a tight red skirt! I was looking the very picture of propriety I’ll have you know. If I didn’t like chocolate so much the damn thing wouldn’t be tight.
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Fantastic descriptions, as usual.
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Lovely images. I never knew Ursula le Guin wrote poetry… Thank you.
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I didn’t know she wrote poetry either. In the forward to the book she says she joined a poetry writing group when she was 70 (!) and many of the poems in the book come from that period.
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I loved this little slice of time with the ‘dust settling’ around me 🙂
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Your imagery is spot on. Always makes me 🙂
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