The smell of secondhand goods
Is everywhere. Lost causes,
Lonely lives, and deaths in small cottages
Among the pines, meet here in the mildewed dark
Of his shop-Abdul Salaam, Proprietor.
Tales of a hundred failures
And ten hundred broken dreams.
A hat-pin and an Iron Cross
Lie down with a blackened pistol,
While a bronze Buddha smiles across
At a plastic doll from Bristol.
Old clothes, old books (perhaps a first edition?),
A dressing-gown, a dagger marked with rust.
A card for some lost Christmas,
And inside, a letter:
"Dear Jane, I am getting better."
A Chinese vase and a china-dog.
The shop is cold and thick with dust,
The Mall is far from Grand;
But Abdul Salaam grows prosperous,
In a suit that"s secondhand.
A Frog Screams
Standing near a mountain stream
I heard a sound like the creaking
Of a branch in the wind.
It was a frog screaming
In the jaws of a long green snake.
I couldn"t bear that hideous cry.
And taking two sharp sticks,
I made the twisting snake disgorge the frog,
Who hopped quite spry out of the snake"s mouth
And sailed away on a floating log.
Pleased with the outcome,