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Local used bookshop, an easy energy comforting shelves crowded with tracks of wisdom, literature, philosophy, religion, the sciences even graphic novels, saucy and weighty fluff, too, for pool side reading fairy tales of fear and fancy (what does turn pumpkins into coaches after all?) stacks of Natural Geographic, provocative, with indigenous innocence, lands and space undusted spread of news I walk through zig-zag enticement on floors that creak like old folks mating uninhibited, protracted browsing bookworm's comforting crawl steadied nirvana Do I take a step in a different direction? buy a cookbook though I've little kitchen recollection Authors recognizable soothing charm in brittle, yellow pages that have passed through protean ages Gravitational pull of old, in a world where nothing much stands still like wired lives, pushed hard in the making I'm told that I'm shackled to what's obsolete to free myself from choke holds past like a bookshop, anachronistic Did I mis-read value? Nourish the inessential? Outside signs are visible: site cleared for re-development Demolition seeps (like tar) into our lives to strip space familiar to uproot stakes of what's connective My aged bookshop, a disrupted treasure, worthy of a quiet reverence dignity before the landscape veers Poem composed: March 8, 2021 Revised: April 3, 2021