Short Shelving Poems

Ma and Pop
pop and ma
the small needle
the big darn.

Little shop of peddlers
first to be robbed,
accused of being
gougers.

Ma wants to move to Florida,
pa wants to expand
the jerky sticks shelving.

Locals know them,
they shop with Ma & Pop
because their near -
they sell beer.

First to go the way
of the dodo,
last to hang around
backs against the wall
old and shaky,
filling in the blanks
in our coloring books....

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She walked into my universe
silently as her lovely smile.
Rarely such beauty is preserved
Bar, perhaps, a Grecian profile:
some alabaster sculptured head
Cold, soulless in a museum
Of a venerable Greek, long dead;
Or maybe an athenaeum
Where I have found her while reading
Looking down at me in the silence
from a vast book-laden shelving.
I overcame my ambivalence
When her face appeared before me
a visage, smiling demurely....

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