Even in the pandemic I am
a yard sale addict not that I need
absolutely anything it’s foraging
unexpected relationship between
seller and object a chance to look
inside a life by looking
at what they put on the table by what
they want to sell. We stopped yesterday
on a street in Leeds, New York a street
with TRUMP flags should we only stop
at Democratic yard sales I think no
and there was a young man in an undistinguished
blue shirt and his young female partner
in front of a house that was just a house
no metaphor for splendor or hip
grey siding maybe the house was from the 80’s
he had real books and I picked up
Allen Ginsberg: Collected Poems.
If you don’t know him you should
said the young man in the blue shirt, named Tim.
I love this book so much I bought two copies.
You can see it’s dog-eared. So many wonderful
poets Tim continued. Yeats, Blake, Gertrude Stein. I
keep a stack of poems near my bed.
He does smiled his girlfriend.
And then, at the next yard sale
in a trailer park nearby, I asked the older man
hair dyed an odd orange he was selling mostly
can openers to tell me his favorite book.
To Kill a Mockingbird, he said.
Its not for sale.
Stereotypes be dammed!