Friday, May 1, 2009

Inscrutable Scrap

(Again, the photo has no direct relationship to the poem ... just something that caught my eye when I was out walking)

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

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