Read a poem by another poet written
on the same day:

Notes of schoolkids at 'Kubla Khan'
and 'Ballad of the Ancient Mariner'
in Coleridge's Poems
in a second-hand bookshop
in Chipping Campden
makes me put the orange-covered copy back
on its shelf
and cling slightly tighter
to the little square black
City Lights edition of Ginsberg's
Fall of America—
all I could find this time around
so I pay and saunter back
to the yellow-stone main street
in my rain jacket
with the consumer's famous feeling
post-purchase: a mix
of bad conscience and pure pleasure
bulging rucksack strapped to my shoulders
the concentration of five minutes before
as my eyes ran vertically, head
turned shoulderwards right or left,
along the shelf
now dispersed
variably attracted by passing pedestrians
and the roar of cars
birdbrain caught by every moving thing

Shutford