I bought them,
two big books,
fat with two lifetimes of poems,
not so much to read them,
which, over a long time, as is meant, I will do,
but just to look at,
their bigness,
heavy as loaves of grainy peasant bread,
and their pictures on the covers,
the two old Polish poets,
Milosz and Herbert,
their beautiful white hair,
their beautiful long white fingers,
their beautiful white cigarettes,
and the smoke like their own beautiful white ghosts.
J.R. Solonche is author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Ed.), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Ed.), In Short Order (forthcoming in April from Kelsay Books), 110 Poems (forthcoming from Deerbrook Ed.), and coauthor of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.
