February 13, 1988
Scheduling
small jobs always involved a certain amount of guesswork — and
inevitably, downtime. With an hour between appointments you could often
find me at a public library shedding sawdust into my chair as I
scribbled furiously into the little notebook that was my journal. One
day I was doing exactly that at the Menlo Park Library while a man at a
nearby table was doing pretty much the same thing, minus the sawdust.
Then suddenly he started whispering…
Her Breasts
The white-haired doddering gentle old man
in the crushing silence of the public library
blinking through spectacles
writes with shaking hands
in a pocket notebook
unaware that he is muttering to himself:
"Her breasts! Her breasts!"
Eyes peer over books. Pencils pause,
except the old man's. Fingers
mark pages. We await,
expectant, puzzled. He has pulled a dusty volume
from the shelf of his memory
and still writing, whispers, hissing:
"Her breasts. . ."
I want to know: Was it in moonlight?
Hurried? Forbidden?
Dear woman, do you know that after half a century
not only your lover but a whole reading room
of men and women are sharing — are in awe of —
your stunning warmth:
"Her breasts! Her breasts!"
wow
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