The Lighthouse Bookstore

Halfway between here and Oregon, the Lighthouse Bookstore
opens along some residential street we browse unwittingly
when reading after dark, where the words and road signs
blur and the sky clouds up and thunders. 

Well-versed in coincidence, we peruse the reference works
for the books you know we stashed somewhere 
between children’s lit and cultural literacy, saving for winter
anything which requires cross-referencing or commitment. 

Up a flight, the antiquarian works lean with arthritis 
on the shoulders of old friends. On wet afternoons, we smell
their dusty parables and wrinkled leather odes—mossy, traditional,
the gilded edges bright despite recent water damage. 

The proprietor roosts omnipotent in the window, bare knees
doubled up, his well-darned socks peering over the incoming tide,
a ledger cradled in arms; he never sleeps, though at times,
he let the lids eclipse his concentration and his judgment. 

Cats drape the banisters and ladders, curling up on footstools,
slinging themselves across counters. The newest hardback hides
beneath the belly of a tabby torn, who reluctantly obliges us
and relocates to the comfort of an unabridged dictionary. 

In the past somewhere, we hear waves, feel the wind 
mount its siege. The walls papered with history and literature
rupture in the storm—the tempest rending the pulpy cocoon,
the breach birthing the hysterical infant brother.