Inscrutable Scrap

 

Oh, there you are ... actually, here I am ... running a little behind schedule ... about 12 hours behind, as a matter of fact. Nothing serious. Just one of those days.

But here I am ...

I have this thing about thrift stores.

I find it difficult to pass one without going inside. Once there, I have trouble getting back out without buying something ... at least a book. At the very least, a book.

Aside from the story the book may have to tell, there are other stories, too ... a note on the flyleaf from the person who originally gave the book to someone else ... marginal notes, sometimes ... underlined passages ... a bookmark indicating a favorite portion ... or where the previous owner stopped reading.

All of these are dividends, I think. I'm curious about people and their reading habits. I like to "know" who the previous readers were.

Then, in this one instance, I got an extra dividend. When I got home with my "prize," I noticed a bit of brown paper ... like a tiny piece of a grocery bag ... peeking out from the book.

I pulled it out ... and discovered ... and, well, that's what the poem's all about:

 

INSCRUTABLE SCRAP

A scrap of paper

jaggedly torn

from a husky brown bag,

held prisoner

by the dusty book;

a frayed finger,

beckoning, pleading,

it surrenders

its shakily-penciled

long-lost message:

                 I LOVE YOU

but keeps its

secrets, too, like

who wrote it, and why

had she kept it

all these years?

© 1995

(originally published in Midwest Poetry Review)

                                ***

Today's word: secrets 

Thank you, Westofthere. When someone indicates a pleasant aftertaste from sipping one of my poems, I feel I've really succeeded.