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,