Vellichor
There was a time bookstores ran for blocks
along 4th Avenue—the air outside
seasoned with mildew and must.
Nowadays, you need a treasure map
to find one—yet I do, on a shabby side
street, next to dry cleaners
and across the alleyway
from a Chinese take-out.
Outside there’s a cart—
there is always a cart—stuffed
with paperbacks at 5 for a buck,
each by an author who struggled to find
just the right word. The owner
is ageless and wears a sweater
his grandmother might have knitted.
He is as unhappy to see me
as all those 4th Avenue book men
were so long ago.
Inside, it is as hushed as a church
at 3 AM and just as holy.
A floor and a half packed
with books of every description
struggling for notice on sagging shelves
and floor-to-ceiling stacks.
There is a basement
but no Charon to row you there.
I spend a happy hour
browsing. I buy nothing—
I rarely do. Truth is, I collect
these old shops like friends
collect stamps. Rickety rooms
of a million memories—
a million buried secrets.
What you told me
You told me it was a big
wide world and the road
outside our door
would take us anywhere.
We couldn’t have been
much older than ten
when you told me
you were ready
to pack a toothbrush
and head for Route 66.
You told me to expect
postcards from all
the places you might visit,
and I imagined a card
from Wyoming
showing you herding cattle
and branding calves,
six gun dangling from your hip
and a forty gallon hat
over your eyes and ears;
or one from Alaska
of you panning for gold
in an icy stream
and holding up a nugget the size
of your head. You told
me of Paris, Moscow
and Warsaw and I pictured
you supping Borscht
on the banks of the Vistula.
You told me of poverty,
famine, and war,
and I saw you leading
a calvary charge—saber
flashing as bright
as your smile—
or all in white, bringing
vaccine to the children
of Turkey or Argentina.
But it was 1953
and your mother told me
of polio,
iron lungs,
and how you would never
walk again.
Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and is poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. Steve was nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. His Chapbook, Perhaps You Can, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length books, Persistence of Memory and Going, Going, Gone, were published by Kelsay. Slipping Away was published this spring. Brooklyn was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press and has just been published.