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The old bookstore.
Do you remember the bookstores?
Books piled high from ceilings to floors.
Pictures and words float before your eyes.
You can read stories of truth and lies.
Without bookstores what can we do
On days we feel sad and blue?
We need a way to escape every day.
A daydream where we can frolic and play.
Please bring back our bookshops.
When I see one, my heart stops.
They are old friends, second homes,
the old bookstores
always let you in, to live
in your imagination or just browse.
The owner is bespectacled, fatherly
he judges kindly your latest acquisition
and takes your money as an afterthought.
So many books for the scholar
the general and the young reader:
used books, mint condition books
first copies with uncut pages
the crisp and new, the yellowing pages
of natural history books
the illustrated, the antiquarian
the amazing stories and fantastic tales
the characters grotesque and Dickensian
the old bookstores full of silence
and arcane knowledge
where you read for hours, self-educated,
absorbed, you don't need a college!
Sandie