Ya see?

I want my money’s worth

so when I buy a book,

say in my “wise-fool” year of college

because my professor said to “read it!”

and it teaches me something I didn’t know,

confirms something I wasn’t sure about.

Well, the book starts paying for itself.

And I carry it around with me

after graduation,

say through two years of knocking around,

rolling concrete

or hitching cross-country to San Diego

to see that zoo they have there

and through three years of Grad School

and maybe in the fourth year of my first teaching job

I read it for the second time

and,

(though I’m nearly twelve years older than when

I bought it at the campus used book shop)

it speaks to me again,

about something new!

It shows me someone else’s perspective

I’d not caught before…

or it paints me into a corner

where I have to think about how to get out of

or asks me whether I can change my mind,

open the door

to let something in I’d been locking out for so long

but I just can’t quite answer yet

because I am older but still too young.

Well!

Then Good!

It’s just about paid in full.

And maybe my bride finally reads it

since I seem to bring it up a lot

and she realizes a little more

what she’s gotten herself into by marrying me

and she’s still happy about it!

And the cash register keeps spitting back dimes!

Then my daughter

finally takes my advice

the summer before she leaves for college,

in France, no less!

She sits down for a long day of reading

and when she’s done,

she hands it back to me and says,

“Merci! Poppa!

I’m gonna buy it for my NOOK!”

And then,

when I am wearing our my recliner

six years after I retire,

I pull it from my book case,

blow the dust off

and read it again.

And it hits me again!

And I cry, again,

over some new thought

and it reminds me

I didn’t waste the purchase price

or all the time and energy it took

to lug it all over Kingdom Come

and I know it doesn’t owe me a nickel.

It deserves a place in the

TAKE-ONE-LEAVE-ONE box

in front of the Salvation Army Thrift Shop

on Main Street

and who knows?

Maybe the book I get in the swap

calms me just a bit,

exactly the way I need to relax,

to stop…

and I die ahead of the game

with silver

jingling

in my pockets.

Now!

That’s a

Damn fine

book.