Drugged on Bookstores and Poetry

Many things happened last week (a thoughtful blog post not included).

Noteworthy incidents involved happy moments in two different book stores...and the spending of money...and the bringing home of books. More Chesterton, Wodehouse, Doug Wilson, Dr. Leithart, Dianna Wynne Jones, and Ray Bradbury.

I also picked up my first Billy Collins book, Ballistics. I think I discovered some poetry that my Mumsie actually likes. :-) Dance of joy!

So far, none of the following poems have captured me like the first, but the whole book is worth this one...

August in Paris

I have stopped here on the rue des écoles
just off the boulevard St-Germain
to look over the shoulder of a man
in a flannel shirt and a straw hat
who has set up an easel and a canvas chair
on the sidewalk in order to paint from a droll angle
a side-view of the Church of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

But where are you, reader,
who have not paused in your walk
to look over my shoulder
to see what I am jotting in this notebook?

Alone in this city,
I sometimes wonder what you look like,
if you are wearing a flannel shirt
or a wraparound blue skirt held together by a pin.

But every time I turn around
you have fled through a crease in the air
to a quiet room where the shutters are closed
against the heat of the afternoon,
where there is only the sound of your breathing
and every so often, the turning of a page.