Yet Another Poem in the Series About Fall 2005

October 3, 2005
One of the singular pleasures of my whole year was this weekend

The big library book sale at fort mason
Where we’ve gone every year
for the past five years
Saturday we spent seven hours
came home on the bus
lugging two large canvas tote bags
full of forty-six books
for ninety-six dollars
Myriad joys make up the day
Anticipation beforehand
thinking ahead to the cart and the map
The way the light diffuses
into the big high warehouse space above your head
filled with white girders and rafters
And of course the books
row upon row
stretching to a vanishing point
seen from one angle as
all spines
or from another as
endless bottoms of pages
The long tables made of bowing plywood
laid across old cardboard fruit cartons
(which are in turn all full of more books)
The tactility of it
the picking up and putting down
The feel of paper under your fingers
The heft in the hand
The quiet state of slowly inching down each aisle
engaged in constant mental activity
reading spines
moving slow but evaluating fast
throwing volumes into the cart with wild abandon 

image source is here