digital art from uncredited news photo
The Bookmobile
by Mary Jo Balistreri
Every two weeks, we’d search the horizon
for a distant cloud of dust. It never failed us.
Into the dry dirt lot the bookmobile rolled toward
a long line of small bodies baking in South Dakota
Finally, finally when the door to the trailer
opened,
the bookmobile lady in wire-rimmed glasses appeared,
her face a text of perception. Black hair swept
high on her head,
she stood in her crisp white blouse.
One by one she handed us a towel to wipe sweaty
hands
before allowing us to cross her threshold.
Inside, a fan blew cool air, and we felt it a holy
place
so different from our homes.
I thumbed through pages of Scarlet O’Hara, but
Nancy Drew proved
more exciting in her blue roadster as did the
flying flanks
of The Black
Stallion and Flame, manes streaming free.
But it was Francie who changed my life.
Like the tree of heaven that sprouted between
cracked cement
outside her Brooklyn
tenement,
she encouraged me to push ever upward, to rise from
my own dirt lot,
and to grow, grow green and alive.
~ previously published on Your Daily Poem
