She Reads Steinbeck by Carl Boon

She reads Steinbeck 

in slants of sun

at the window. She reads,

 

a piano only she can hear,

desperate, dissatisfied.

She needs something more

 

than prose of grass and strain, 

boys holding shovels,

the days they told of wine.

 

California stretches from her,

its limes, its dance east

toward the Sierras. So she sighs. 

 

She won’t be loved as roses are,

nor the skyline night. She will be

as one who came to the edge 

 

and faltered, fell against a cabin

and slept. The soil’s scattered 

with stones, old loves, and limits.

Carl Boon lives and works in Izmir, Turkey. Aside from his work as teacher and writer, he enjoys the Delta Blues, Chimay beer, and surf fishing.