This book on how to grow an indoor
vegetable garden is good,
you can do it in your attic or
window boxes, you make the equipment
from foil-covered cookie tins, your neighbors
may not be happy.

And the medicinal herb plot is even
more persuasive, takes less room
and works better than the pills you get
from offshore dispensaries.

The men chatting at the desk have clear
child-like voices.  They seem quite right
about what is wrong with us
until they get to the Illuminati,
but hey, who knows?

They are kind to me and
point me to the back where the reading
is going on.  I want to
buy something, maybe the Vegan cookbook
for my daughter-in-law, but I have never heard
of any of these ingredients.

There is one novel, only one,
a sci-fi all by itself on the shelf
and I buy it, tuck it in my raincoat pocket
with twelve cents change.

Because this is the idea
of a bookstore.
The voices are the notion of
discussion.
This is the marketplace of
thought, and you have to
buy something.

© by Janet McCann.
 Used with the author’s permission.