Alluvium

I keep finding the best books
Lying on the floor and end-tables
Around the neatly organized shelves
Of the library and bookstore.

Someone has grabbed each one
Looked with a pensive blank stare
And dropped it–not where they found it–
But in front of me, to pick up
After them.

There is something sacred
About leafing through another’s garbage;
Now that I think of it
My most cherished finds
In an ancient brook
Have been picked from the piles of stones
That others have sifted through
And blindly looked past
Those million-year-old rocks
Missing the delicate ammonite
Hiding in the open.

There is great value
In having a blind man
Do your digging for you.

by Robert Lloyd Jaffe