around town (haibun)

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around town (haibun)

I hesitate.  Stepping sideways through the unfamiliar door, I shuffle between sagging, purpose-built shelves, moving slowly to give my eyes time to adjust.  A spill of cracked spines, piled one on top of the other fill floor-to-ceiling shelves marked by the occasional cock-eyed, hand-written sign promising some kind of order.

shadows
curtain the alcove –
a beard coughs

Sections run into each other; “LITERATURE” and “DO-IT-YOURSELF” which separates “COOKING” from  “POETRY”.  “TASMANIA”  continues around a corner,  becoming random miscelleneous along a wall down the hallway.  Various unsorted manuscripts sprawl across a jumble of comics laid out on a table that brings me back to the doorway I stepped through a couple of hours ago.

“FANTASY”
by the disappearing staircase
I hesitate.

~~~

moonset may 2008