sylvia

sylvia ***this concerns several books I once owned. Some were written by Rod McKuen, others by Richard Brautigan, others by others…*** i discovered that words are like some decadent dessert too small to cause harm but too big to have a second helping in the margins of tattered books were scribbled lines i hoped to someday share with someone who still had tears in her eyes from last night’s disappointment for years i had filled my bible margins with illegible scribbling some printed words i had crossed out and rewritten but never those of rod mckuen or the bible today i grew older simply by watching days roll in like a warm ocean breeze waves taste the sand so slowly and so it is with rod mckuen but he was going nowhere in his rush to cross over some imaginary line of demarcation i once owned many books hundreds aligned to make room to make room imaginary for new things to be pushed aside i’m still yearning for a phone booth where i can make a call for two bits i’ll always wonder if maybe i had called sylvia plath if she would have answered there was no need her answer had already preceded the question © tolbert