I could not be more grateful to the most excellent Seattle Tammy and Seattle Dan aka Bookem & Dano, proprieters of Jackson Street Books for the gift they included in my Christmas shipment - an autographed copy of "The Financial Lives of The Poets" - a novel of considerable excellence and humor. However, I may not have picked the most auspicious time to be reading it as it rings a little too close to home at times, what with having only another week left at work before plunging into the abyss and all that.
I had a moment of head-meets-table this morning when picking it up over my steaming morning cup of maple syrup and turning to the new chapter to find this bit of poesy from author Jess Walter:
Chapter 7
The Last Days of the
Newspaper Business
I dreamed I was on my bike, delivering the last paper
to the final porch and I tossed that rag at least a mile --
last dream of a democratic process -- and the end of the papers
fell like a snowflake on the faded wood planks
of my old man's porch, and came out in slippers,
picked it up, slipped off the rubber band -- and the thing
exploded with fresh despairs: new Vietnams and
Watergates, Mansons and Patty Hearsts, not to mention
Andy Capp and Hi and Lois, horoscopes, a Crossword puzzle,
box scores -- even the obit of my poor mother. And
my old man told me not to cry, that even good things die,
son, and he folded that paper back up and tucked
the only good thing I ever did under his arm, easing back
into the warm house of my dead childhood to take
his morning shit.
Posts
