In Ghost House - A Fine Collection

The Books I Read in Autumn

 

for Kathy, Jeanne, Mike, Chip, Marty, Paul, Josh

They were all mysteries, flesh

and blood; contemporary, all cutting edge.

None were made from a false scaffold.

Each spine listened in the morning light.

No page played the know it all.

The plots meandered the way I like.

Someone sat at a prairie sickbed.

Love came on hard and sexy. Another love

got funny with a gun, and bones. Intermittent

were the chapters of forgiveness. Horses, Paris,

 cactus, windows, swaddled babies, tyrants. Each

 story knew it’s perfect article, a or the. Each

 loved its “S”es and was possessive, sibilant

 and strange. Such a book becoming plural 

gets my full attention. Seven minds


together in a small adobe room 


remain this year's best of best.
  .