Mother's Little Helper #2

Here’s what every housewife needs: a good dose of poetry in the morning.

I’ve been enjoying Billy Collins’ latest collection which is entitled Ballistics. Poetry makes so much sense for the harried/befuddled set, mostly because it can be enjoyed in discrete readings. You don’t need to remember what the last one was about to enjoy the next little gem. It’s also pretty darn uplifting. BC has been a favorite of mine ever since I hung out with him at the Cedar Bar ten years ago or so with a group of fellow hangers-on after a reading. There’s a riff on Frank O’Hara (another in my pantheon) that knocked me out. The only problem is it’s a library book. You see, things are tight here at the funny farm these days. As we navigate the rough terrain of raising a family on one income, we’re cutting out a lot of the incidentals. One of my cost cutting directives has been no new books until Christmas (and then only a few…). So I’ve been patronizing the local library with the frequency of Homer hitting the Quickie Mart. We are incredibly fortunate to have a bustling little branch right here in Lovetown. Normally it works out fine: we read the work in question (up to a zillion times if it’s a kid’s book), return it and move on to the next one. But Ballistics is now overdue and it’s stressing me out. I tried to renew it online and got an irksome “failure to renew” message because some other (clearly very enlightened) local citizen has requested it. I’m feeling kind of proprietary about this one because it’s thanks to me that the library system even owns this book. They didn’t have it in their collection until I requested it. It’s mine! Of course, it’s not mine, and I’ll be handing it over (maybe a few days (weeks?) late). Some books you don’t want to borrow. Some books you just want to have…