~The Bookstall

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.

by Linda Pastan, Carnival Evening

Photo: Flourish & Blotts,
the bookstore in the Harry Potter series.