Buying books from a second-hand bookstore and being second-guessed by the woman behind the counter
What is the word for the smell of books?
Is there a word
For the smell of books?
_
Two words, really
For distinctly separate scents
New and old.
_
New books -
Promise and petrichor
Fresh and full of
Wonder.
_
Old books
Smell like time and love
And oil-soaked wooden furniture
And old leather chairs.
_
I find two old books
Tucked away in the
English language section
In a shop in the shadow
Of the Parthenon
Late afternoon rummaging
For reading material
Raw material for
Imagination and
Thought.
_
812 pages of King
Horror-fantasy
And 110 pages of Atwood
Prose-poetry
And the woman at the counter
Gives me a strange look
To see these books
Side by side
_
But surely only
A fool
Would say these books
Are unalike.
_
All great books are alike
In the same way -
All bad books are unique
In their badness.
_
Still, the woman behind the counter
Frowns
And maybe she is right,
In her own way.
_
For me, though
_
They both smell of oil-soaked wood
And leather and love
And time stored away
In the pages.
__
For this poem and many more, you can find my latest book The Jungle Waits in ebook and paperback on this link (or the local Amazon site for the country you happen to be in) : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMXPXT8S
About the Creator
Roderick Makim
Read one too many adventure stories as a child and decided I'd make that my life.
I grew up on a cattle station in the Australian Outback and decided to spend the rest of my life seeing the rest of the world.
For more: www.roderickmakim.com
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