In a small used bookstore
    quaint, charming, cozy
    itself the work of poets
precariously perched
    over a snowtrimmed mill creek
with its breathtakingly beautiful
    tiny
    waterfall, poetry itself...

My mother tells me,
returning from the counter
    that the man at the desk
had blinked in surprise
    on seeing the gems laid out
            before him
my selections

For he had seen me
    little black-clad teen child
long dark trenchcoat trailing
    neck draped with a gleaming ankh
and my short-cropped hair
which my uncle considers
    "dyke-y"
    and rightly so
all this he saw, then
    laid before him
my choice of Ginsburg, Ferlinghetti
    and marveled at my good taste

All this mother told me
    and I smiled wryly, taking
    the books under my arm
and thinking it purely obvious.