Stealing a Poem

Yellow Brick Road, 2012

Before returning a library book, I sat on the corner of 4th and Shoreline, across from the little yellow house and the brick oven bakery, on a bench in front of the pharmacy, beside a box of hula hoops and a telephone booth, and slid my dark glasses over my ears before resting them on the bridge of my nose, and stole the poem on page 287, copying the title in capital letters and the rest in mixed case, into my notebook, with a pencil I did not love.